


And If Secrets Were Like Seeds

by transdimensional_void



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Blended family, Fix-It of Sorts, Infertility, M/M, Mpreg, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2020-12-13 20:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 36,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21003452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdimensional_void/pseuds/transdimensional_void
Summary: Merlin has a secret or three, and Arthur (eventually) learns them all.Or, the one where Merlin is pregnant and it isn’t Arthur’s (yet).Update: Now with epilogue!





	1. And If Secrets Were Like Seeds

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Arthur Pendragron's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of this author.

**** Arthur’s first inkling that something might be wrong with Merlin came on the morning that he returned from a hard training session to find his manservant slumped half across the royal bed, snoring away while one hand still loosely clung to the mop he had presumably been applying to Arthur’s floor.

A scowl darkened the prince’s face, and he was already thinking up a list of the loudest and least comfortable ways of awaking his useless servant from his nap when he recalled having returned the previous morning to the sight of Merlin retching into his mop bucket. The prince’s scowl deepened to a frown as he puzzled this out. Perhaps, he thought to himself as he strode across the room and yanked the mop from Merlin’s slack grip, his manservant was coming down with something.

With a clearer expression and a calmer mind, he set about the task of jostling the drooling Merlin awake and chasing him from his chambers with firm orders not to return until Gaius had given him a clean bill of health.

It didn’t occur to him until sometime later—after he’d had another servant draw his bath and help him dress—that Merlin had gone too easily. He hadn’t had a single insolent word to toss at Arthur as he’d stumbled out the door, and _that_ was proof, if any more were needed, that Merlin was certainly not himself.

Satisfied that he’d solved the mystery, Arthur went about his day, not thinking of Merlin at all—other than to pop down to Gaius’s quarters after lunch and at tea time and shortly before dinner, just to ensure that whatever Merlin had wasn’t catching—until he pulled back his covers in preparation for climbing underneath them. As the linens shifted, a faint scent drifted up to him, one that caused him to still and draw a deep breath. There was something familiar about it, something distinctly _Merlin_, but there was an intriguingly different note mixed in as well. He couldn’t help frowning again as he gave himself a hearty shake and finished getting into bed.

Merlin was nothing but a beta. Beta scents were, by definition, boring, nothing in them at all to catch the interest of an alpha like Arthur. And anyway this was _Merlin_. Nothing about _Merlin_ could ever be intriguing.

And having thoroughly convinced himself of that, he made a mental note to stop by Gaius’s again first thing after breakfast, closed his eyes, and fell at once to sleep.

**

Arthur’s next clue that something was very much wrong with Merlin came the next morning when, upon opening the door to the prince’s insistent knock, Gaius all but slammed it in his face again.

“I assure you, Sire, Merlin is quite well and only needs a little rest,” the physician asserted, the glare in his eye a poor match for the politeness of his tone.

“Then why was he vomiting the other morning,” Arthur demanded. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Gaius. It was just that he trusted the evidence of his own eyes—and, ugh, _nose_—even more.

“Probably something he ate,” Gaius muttered, already drawing the door closed.

“But that was the third time this week—” Arthur tried to object, but the door to the physician’s chambers had already snicked shut again.

**

Despite Gaius’s dubious claims about Merlin’s health, Merlin didn’t return to his regular duties for nearly a full week. And then, to Arthur’s open-mouthed astonishment, the idiot had the gall to claim that he really had just been resting all that time and had never been sick at all.

Arthur’s teeth made a hideous sound as they ground together in the back of his mouth, yet Merlin simply gazed at him with those wide, guileless eyes.

“All right,” Arthur said when he at last felt capable of unclamping his jaw, “if that’s really the case, then you should be fine making up all the chores you missed while you were lazing about in bed.”

There was something so utterly satisfying about the way Merlin’s face paled when Arthur unfurled the list of chores, long enough to roll from his hand all the way to the floor and then some. He’d known it would be worth the hours he’d put in last night writing it out.

The prince found himself far less satisfied later that afternoon when he came across Merlin passed out in his chambers once again. This time he hadn’t even made it to the bed but had curled up on the hearth before Arthur’s fire, a pile of Arthur’s dirty laundry clutched tight against his chest.

If asked, Arthur wasn’t sure he could have articulated why he decided to leave Merlin there or why he chose to pull the covers from his own bed and drape them over the sleeping servant before tiptoeing from the room and getting on with his day. It was probably, he decided later, the result of being at his wit’s end when it came to dealing with his wayward manservant.

By the time Arthur returned to his chambers just before dinner, Merlin was gone, and Arthur’s covers were back on his bed, neatly tucked in as though they’d never left it. 

That night, when Arthur climbed under them, he caught that scent again, stronger this time, tickling his nose and triggering something warm and confusing inside his chest. He did his best to ignore it. Surely it couldn’t be Merlin’s own scent. He’d probably bumped into one of the castle’s many omega servants or perhaps wandered through some strange-smelling weeds while out collecting herbs for Gaius. Surely there was some such simple, completely uninteresting explanation for the disturbing scent, he told himself. And then he pulled the covers close to his face, drew a deep, deep breath, and drifted off almost at once to sleep.

**

For several weeks, Merlin’s behavior was entirely unremarkable. Which meant he was only his usual level of completely incompetent and utterly useless as a servant, and Arthur could almost have forgotten that things had ever been different if not for that _scent_.

It seemed to grow stronger as the weeks went by, until it reached the point that throughout the day, Arthur’s chambers smelled of it constantly. It dissipated overnight while he slept only to return with the morning (and Merlin). And _still_ he couldn’t quite figure out what it was or what he found so intriguing about it.

Then, finally, one late autumn morning, the truth came crashing down all around his ears—or perhaps _splashing_ down would be a more appropriate characterization.

Arthur had been soaking his sore muscles in the bath after another brutal training session. There had been strange goings on in Camelot in recent months—things Arthur didn’t like at all because he couldn’t fix any of them by running them through with his sword. After miraculously being restored to them, Morgana had nearly died from a terrible fall, and then there had been the king’s odd…episodes…and those sightings of weird (probably magical) creatures during Princess Elena’s ill-fated visit. It was all very frustrating, and Arthur found himself taking out these frustrations on the practice field. The extra work was good for him and his knights, but it left him feeling like he’d been in a real battle instead of only a practice one.

Which was why he’d made Merlin draw him a bath and then sit behind him and rub Gaius’s special liniment into his aching shoulders while he soaked in the soothing, warm water. He’d half drifted off under the ministrations of Merlin’s long, clever fingers and hadn’t even noticed that his servant had stopped rubbing and had risen from his stool until the clumsy oaf slipped on a puddle and landed right in Arthur’s bathwater.

“What the hell!” Arthur spluttered, jerking back to full consciousness only to find his manservant floundering upon his very naked lap. “Get off me!” he yelled, placing his hands against whatever part of Merlin he could reach—his face it turned out—and pushing hard.

“I’m sorr--” Merlin gasped, slipping further into the water while one arm and both legs flailed uselessly in the air. The rest of his sentence was cut off by a gargle and a mouthful of bathwater.

Arthur had no choice but to launch himself from the bath, grab for the nearest item with which to preserve his modesty—his discarded shirt—and then stand there, dripping and definitely _not_ relaxed while Merlin extracted himself from the tub.

By the time Merlin was upright again, half the bathwater was on the floor, and Arthur was getting cold. He was on the verge of pointing out these two extremely dissatisfactory realities to Merlin when he took a closer look at his servant and promptly lost the plot.

“M-Merlin?” he heard himself ask, voice wavering in a manner that made him glad no one more important than his servant was around to hear.

Merlin was completely soaked from dripping hair to sopping boots, and his well-worn woolen shirt now clung to his thin frame like a second skin—except, from what Arthur could see, Merlin wasn’t all that thin anymore. Or rather, most of him was pretty thin, but one part of him in particular—namely, his abdomen—had grown alarmingly round. And Arthur might not have thought anything of such a change if not for the way that Merlin’s hands had curled themselves protectively around this anomalous protuberance or how he was rubbing his palms slowly against it as if soothing something…or someone.

At the sound of Arthur’s voice, Merlin snatched his hands away, and his eyes darted to the side as though he’d been caught in some illicit activity.

“Y-yes?” Merlin asked, but before Arthur could answer, he was grabbing up a towel and bearing down upon the prince with a cheery, slightly crazed smile plastered across his face. “I’ll just get you dried and dressed now, shall I? And then I’ll see about mopping up this mess. Watch your step, Sire! It _is_ slippery!” And he accompanied this with the worst attempt at a carefree laugh that Arthur thought he’d ever heard.

“_Mer_lin,” Arthur growled, swiping the towel from his hands and taking a step back to put some distance between himself and Merlin’s manic grasp. “What is _that_?” He waved a hand in the general direction of Merlin’s lower half, still quite obviously larger than it had been the last time Arthur had seen it.

“What is what?” Merlin asked, hunching forward as though he really thought he could hide it from Arthur now.

“That,” Arthur said with a scoff, thrusting a finger out toward Merlin’s swollen belly. “That hasn’t always looked like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Merlin tried to claim, but Arthur didn’t miss the way his gaze jerked away from Arthur’s or how his hands tried to rise to clutch at the roundness again.

Arthur opened his mouth to tell Merlin exactly what he thought of these pathetic attempts at lying when _that scent_ practically smacked him across the face. It was far, far stronger than it had ever been any of the previous times he’d caught it, so strong in fact that he could no longer be in any doubt of what it was: the scent of an omega.

The scent of a _pregnant_ omega.

Before he quite knew what he was doing, Arthur found himself with his hands clutched in the fabric of Merlin’s sopping shirt and his nose hovering over his servant’s throat, snuffling in deep draughts of his scent, confirming what Arthur’s brain still refused to accept: that Merlin was an omega—that Merlin was a _pregnant_ omega.

Eventually, Arthur’s brain caught up with the rest of him, and with a loud clearing of his throat, he let Merlin go and (that warmth he felt all across his skin was _not_ a blush; manly Crown Princes of Camelot did _not_ blush) snatched up the towel he’d dropped in his surprise and wound it around his bare midsection.

Only then did he notice how still Merlin had gone, how his shoulders had slumped, how he’d completely failed to resist Arthur’s overly-familiar inspection.

For several moments, Arthur could only stand there and stare at his manservant (his pregnant, omega manservant, _oh gods_), trying to make sense of it all. Then, at last, he sighed and reached for one of the extra towels.

“Here,” he said, waving it under Merlin’s nose. “You’d better dry off before you take a chill.” When Merlin didn’t immediately react, Arthur shook his head and walked around behind the other man to push him gently toward the fire. Once he’d got him there, he made him sit down on the rug and wrap himself up in the towel while Arthur went about the laborious business of getting himself dried and dressed without assistance.

Once he’d made himself presentable again, he strode back to the fire, crossed his arms over his chest and considered his manservant. Merlin sat huddled under the towel, hair and clothes dripping onto the hearth rug, gaze seemingly fixed on its thick, coarse fibers.

“Well,” Arthur said, doing his best to sound princely and commanding rather than stunned and somewhat awed. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

For a moment, Arthur thought that Merlin wasn’t going to say anything. Then at last he responded with the faintest of mumbles.

“I’m an omega.”

“Yes,” Arthur said slowly, trying very hard not to grit his teeth. “I gathered as much. How about the rest of it?”

“I…” Merlin said, still staring at the rug, “I pretended to be a beta.”

“You lied,” Arthur corrected him. “You lied to me. You lied to my father. You lied to all of Camelot.”

Merlin’s chin fell and rose in the barest of nods. A few drops of bathwater gathered at the tip of his nose and slid off onto the rug.

“I lied to everyone,” he agreed.

Arthur felt himself frowning. Of course he wanted Merlin to admit that he’d been lying, but such easy agreement from him raised Arthur’s hackles.

“Why?” he asked, making his tone as harsh as he could, hoping to prompt more of a reaction from Merlin.

All he got for the trouble was a half-hearted shrug.

“It made life easier?” Merlin mumbled.

A sigh escaped Arthur then, and he raised a hand to rub it over his face. Only Merlin could be so frustrating even when he was being agreeable.

“Okay, so what about the other thing?” Arthur tried. “You’re…” he had to pause and swallow. For some reason, the word was difficult to get out. “You’re _pregnant_.”

Merlin’s chin dipped—another nod.

“Yeah,” came the colorless response. “I am.”

“Well?” Arthur prompted.

Finally, Merlin’s head tilted a little to the side and his eyes rose from the rug to fix for a moment on Arthur’s face. He was pale, eyes wide and full of…something. Despair, maybe?

“Well what?” he asked.

“What do you think?” Arthur snapped. “Who’s the other parent?”

“Oh,” Merlin said and turned away again. “Gwaine.”

It took Arthur at least a full minute to process that information. He remembered their brief acquaintance with the wastrel alpha all too well. He’d felt a healthy mix of respect and contempt for the man at the time. A talented fighter he might have been, and one who had saved Arthur’s life more than once, but from what Arthur could see, he was mostly wasting his talents on drunken brawling. Surveying the damage he’d left in his wake—the hunch of Merlin’s shoulders, the drip of moisture off the tip of his nose that Arthur strongly suspected was no longer just bathwater—his estimation of the alpha fell even lower than it had been before.

“He didn’t know I was an omega,” Merlin muttered then, spooking Arthur out of his thoughts. “I didn’t think it mattered. I—” He paused to make a sound that was definitely a sniffle. “Gaius makes me a potion every month that’s supposed to keep this from happening."

“Every month?” Arthur demanded, teetering on the edge of a full breakdown. “Just how many people have you been sleeping with?”

That drew a glare from Merlin, and Arthur just managed to keep a smile of relief from springing to his lips. _There_ was the Merlin he knew.

“None of your business,” Merlin bit out. 

“None of my business?” Arthur echoed, letting out an incredulous snort. “I’m about to lose my manservant as a result of your wanton ways, so I think it most certainly _is_ my business.”

But that had apparently been the wrong thing to say because Merlin’s glare transformed at once into a wide-eyed panic.

“You’re firing me?”

“What? No, I’m not _firing_ you, Merlin, but you can’t very well take care of me and a newborn at the same time.”

“Why not?” Merlin returned hotly. “I bet the newborn won’t need half as much tending as you do.”

“Ha ha. Very funny, Merlin.” Arthur rolled his eyes. Any other day, Merlin’s insolence might have riled him, but he found that just now he couldn’t raise the energy for a proper fight. “You can make all the jokes you want, but this is all very inconvenient for me.” He shook his head and then dropped it into the palm of one hand. “I’ll have to send someone out to look for that good-for-nothing alpha I suppose. And I’ll have to find a way to convince my father to let him back into Camelot.”

Even if he did manage to obtain Gwaine’s pardon, it was going to be a pain explaining to his father why it was so important to spare some knights for a search party just because some ruffian of an alpha had knocked up his idiot manservant. Uther would probably order him to cast Merlin out into the streets and call it a day. No, the long and short of it was that he’d have to keep the truth of the matter from his father. He sighed again.

“You….what?” Merlin’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Wait, you want to send someone out to find Gwaine? What for?”

Arthur consoled himself that at least Merlin was sounding more and more like his usual self, nonsense and all.

“What for?” Arthur repeated. “Who’s going to earn you and your child’s keep once you have to take care of a baby all day?”

“I will!” Merlin said, sitting up straight enough that the towel slipped from his shoulders and onto the floor. “Back in Ealdor, you worked or you starved, baby or no. I can do my duties and take care of the baby. If my mum managed, then I can too.”

There were so many things wrong with Merlin’s argument that Arthur didn’t even have the time to tell him how wrong he was. For one thing, the palace was _not_ Ealdor. Merlin couldn’t very well serve Arthur at a state banquet with an infant strapped to his back. And even if he could, he most certainly couldn’t ride out on hunts or patrols or quests with Arthur and the knights while dragging a baby in tow. And whatever the people of Ealdor could or couldn’t manage, Arthur strongly suspected that Merlin’s mother had help in raising him, even if only from the other villagers. Who was going to help Merlin here in the palace? Gaius? The other servants? None of them could spare any more time from their regular duties than Merlin could.

No, Merlin’s solution was completely out of the question. His only option was to retire from work and find an alpha to support him, preferably the one who had put him in this situation in the first place, no matter how unsuitable a parent or life partner Arthur personally thought he must be—no matter how much Arthur hated the idea of Merlin bonded and settled down with _Gwaine_ of all people. Merlin might be the worst manservant in the history of servants, but surely he could do better than _Gwaine_.

Not that anyone in particular was springing to mind. Most of the unattached alphas Arthur knew were nobles, which put them squarely out of the question. Occasionally, a noble alpha might take a common-born omega as a lover or concubine, but there was no way in hell Arthur would consign Merlin to that fate: a position in life one step above a common prostitute.

There was that Lancelot fellow. Merlin had got on well with him, and he seemed a solid and dependable sort—if only he could be tracked down. But even if he could be, there was no guarantee that he’d be willing to marry Merlin. Not many alphas would be, not with him already carrying some other alpha’s spawn. Perhaps if Arthur offered some sort of monetary incentive…? On the other hand, could Arthur really entrust Merlin and his child’s safety to someone who only agreed to take them on for financial gain? 

He shook his head and frowned more deeply, wishing Merlin would shut up for a moment about whatever he was rambling on about so that Arthur could think more clearly.

The problem was that Arthur was only too aware of how alphas often treated their omegas. For every loving alpha who provided and cared for their family, there were plenty more who treated their spouses as little better than slaves. He shuddered at the thought of Merlin trapped in a situation like that simply because he needed someone to support him and his child. There was no guarantee that any alpha, including _Gwaine _(he could hardly think the name without feeling disgust), wouldn’t end up mistreating Merlin.

No, the more Arthur considered the conundrum, the clearer it became that there was only one alpha in all of Albion he could trust to take care of Merlin to his own satisfaction.

“Very well,” Arthur said with a decisive nod.

“—can’t force me to marry someone just because— Wait, what?”

“Shut up, Merlin,” Arthur sighed, rolling his shoulders, which had tensed and bunched up as though his earlier bath had never even happened. (He made a mental note to add a second shoulder massage to Merlin’s list of unfinished chores.)

Merlin’ face was taking on that belligerent look that Arthur knew meant he was really gearing up for a rant now, so Arthur made sure to speak extra loudly.

“It’s clear that there’s only one solution to this problem.”

Merlin’s expression hardened even further, forcing Arthur to raise his voice even louder to be heard over Merlin’s exclamation of “I’m not leaving Camelot!”

“Would you just listen to— Wait, leave Camelot? Of course I don’t expect you to leave, you great numpty. I’m going to claim the child as my own.”

That shut Merlin up at last.

His servant’s mouth was hanging open again, probably ready to blurt out some more of his usual nonsense, but instead it just stayed that way, wide and empty, probably much the same as the inside of his head was. Arthur found himself rather pleased by the effect.

“I’ll take on the responsibility of the child’s care,” he continued in a more moderate tone. “I’ll hire a nurse to care for them until they are old enough for a tutor—”

“You can’t!” Merlin spat out then, and it was all Arthur could do not to roll his eyes at the fresh interruption.

“You seem to have forgotten which one of us is the servant and which the master,” he snorted. “I very well can.”

“Well, you shouldn’t,” Merlin returned. “Everyone will think that we— That you— And I—“

“Yes, Merlin. You do catch on quickly.”

Merlin’s arms rose in the air and flailed in an alarming manner.

“They’ll think my child is a _noble_, Arthur. Have you thought about that? My child will grow up thinking that you are their _father_. Do you have any idea what that will mean?”

That did give Arthur pause, though he’d never admit it anywhere other than inside the safety of his own thoughts. Now that Merlin mentioned it, he hadn’t really considered the fact that he was about to become a parent. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him.

“I always knew I’d be a father one day,” he said, squaring his shoulders and looking Merlin in the eye. “Now is as good a time as any. And this is the best solution. I can ensure that the child is well looked after, and I won’t be inconvenienced by having to find myself a new manservant.”

There was a strange look in Merlin’s eyes, and Arthur braced himself for more arguing, but then to his surprise, Merlin’s arms lowered and his mouth clicked shut. He drew in a great, heaving breath and turned to stare into the fire.

“Just, promise me you won’t announce that it’s yours until you absolutely have to,” came Merlin’s voice from over his shoulder. “Just…just in case you come up with a better idea.”

With astonishment, Arthur realized that that was actually a sensible suggestion.

“Very well,” he said.

“And one other thing, Arthur,” came Merlin’s quiet voice again. 

“Yes?”

“What are you going to tell Gwen?”

**

The conversation with Gwen turned out to be the least of Arthur’s worries over the next several weeks.

Once Merlin’s situation had been explained to her, she didn’t look all that surprised (and Arthur wasn’t annoyed at all by the fact that she’d apparently already guessed both of Merlin’s secrets). When Arthur laid out his brilliant plan for her, she looked suitably impressed (or perhaps that was stunned; he couldn’t quite be sure), but to Arthur’s consternation, instead of congratulating him on the force of his intellect, she turned to Merlin (who had been the one to fetch her discreetly up to Arthur’s quarters) and took his hand.

“Oh, Merlin,” she said, gazing at him with her lovely eyes filled with tears, “You poor thing. I wondered if I should say something earlier, but I thought it best to let you speak up when you felt was right.”

“It’s fine,” Merlin shrugged, gazing back at her with moisture filling his own eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

“Does Gwaine know? Surely, he wouldn’t have left if he did,” she answered her own question almost at once.

“He _was_ banished upon pain of death,” Arthur helpfully reminded them.

“It’s better this way,” Merlin told Gwen, squeezing her hand and not even acknowledging Arthur’s contribution. “I don’t think he’s really set up to support a mate and a child anyway.”

Gwen’s eyes sparkled a look of tender understanding that made Arthur feel impatient. Yes, yes, Gwaine not being around was very tragic, but they seemed to be missing the entire point, which was that Arthur had already figured out how to save the day.

“Do you miss him terribly?” Gwen murmured.

Merlin shook his head and laughed a little.

“Nah,” he said. “He was a friend, that’s all. It wasn’t, uh, I mean we weren’t in love or anything.”

“Then how did you end up pregnant?” Arthur muttered, irritated that they were _still_ talking about _Gwaine._

At least that finally drew Merlin’s attention, in the form of a side-eye glare. 

“The same way omegas usually end up pregnant. What do you think?”

Gwen (the traitor) let out a soft laugh and shook her head.

“Well, hopefully we’ll be able to come up with a plan to help you. Have you considered going back home to Ealdor?”

Arthur was on the verge of interjecting that he already _had _a plan to help Merlin, but it was Merlin who spoke up first.

“Camelot is my home,” he said firmly. “And don’t worry. We’ll think of something.”

“I already have thought of something,” Arthur said, feeling extremely vexed, and Gwen and Merlin both turned to him with wide eyes as though surprised to find him there.

“Yes, you have,” Gwen agreed after a moment, though he could have wished she sounded more certain about it.

Merlin just looked away, his hand still gripped tightly in Gwen’s.

Arthur was gearing himself up for a big speech about how they ought to leave everything in his capable hands and stop worrying so much when a knock on the door (which turned out to be Morgana coming in search of her maidservant) brought the conversation to a premature end.

And he might have reconvened it at a later date, in order to ensure that it had been fully impressed upon both Merlin and Gwen that Arthur’s plan was the only way forward, except then that whole thing happened with Gwen going missing and it turning out that her brother had been kidnapped, and well, there were other, more pressing problems for Arthur to deal with.

Of course, he hadn’t forgotten about Merlin’s…condition. When it became apparent that Merlin was going to ignore his order to not come along on the dangerous trip and was not going to stay behind with the horses while he, Gwen, and Morgana entered the tunnels, he’d resigned himself to having to take extra care of both Merlin and Gwen. Thank the gods at least Morgana knew how to properly defend herself. When Cenred’s thugs had roughly taken hold of Merlin to drag him off to their cell, it had been all Arthur could do not to rip himself free and run them through—but they’d had a sword to Gwen’s throat, and it was either let them manhandle Merlin or lose Gwen.

Somehow they’d all made it through the ordeal hale and whole, but the moment they were safely back in his chambers, Arthur had made it plain to Merlin that he was never again under any circumstance to risk himself and the baby like that.

“If I hadn’t you’d be dead,” Merlin said, and Arthur had no choice but to laugh.

“Please, Merlin, do keep up the hilarious jokes.”

But of course Merlin hadn’t listened, and instead when Arthur had left on a quest that he was required to complete _alone_, what did Merlin do but follow him! Worse, he hadn’t come by himself.

Which was how Arthur now found himself seated on one side of a campfire with Merlin and _Gwaine_ of all people on the opposite side. Arthur had only been able to stare when the alpha had appeared at the other end of the sword that had just slain a wyvern. First, he’d stared good and hard at Gwaine, just to convince himself that he wasn’t still passed out and dreaming. Then he’d turned his stare on Merlin, who’d only looked sheepish and refused to meet Arthur’s eyes.

There’d been no time for a chat just then, of course, but now that the quest was done and the golden trident tidily retrieved, Arthur had expected that the three of them would be discussing the very important piece of news that now hung in the air above their cozy campfire thicker than smoke. Except that Arthur gathered from Gwaine’s carefree attitude and Merlin’s furtive looks and tiny head shakes that they were, in fact, _not_ going to be discussing it.

“It’s really too bad I can’t go back to Camelot with you two,” Gwaine was saying as he leaned back on his palms, boots stuck out toward the fire. “I thought the three of us made a fine team.”

“Hmm,” Arthur said, “Too bad.”

“Merlin and I especially,” Gwaine added, with a grin and a sly glance to his left at Merlin. “work very well together.” And then, to Arthur’s utter disgust, he _winked_.

Arthur glared at Merlin. Merlin let out a shaky laugh and looked at the ground. Arthur turned his glare on Gwaine. Gwaine winked at Arthur too. Arthur, feeling helpless, looked at Merlin again, but Merlin was still holding his gaze steady on the dirt.

Arthur gave up and flopped back onto his bedroll. Who was he to spill Merlin’s secrets for him? Only the crown prince of Camelot. Only the person whose responsibility it was to ensure the health and happiness of all of Camelot’s citizens, which, if he weren’t mistaken, included Merlin and his child. (Though, he supposed, technically Merlin was from Cenred’s kingdom. He made a mental note to himself to have Geoffrey draw up documents officially granting Merlin and his heirs citizenship. It wouldn’t do to have Merlin suddenly realize his care and keeping didn’t technically fall under Arthur’s purview.)

The following morning, once they’d reached Camelot’s border and said their good-byes to Gwaine (and Merlin had ignored every one of Arthur’s pointed looks and gestures), Arthur waited until the other alpha was out of earshot before rounding on Merlin.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell him.”

Merlin was doing that thing where he refused to look at Arthur again.

“Sometimes people are happier not knowing the truth,” he said, a muscle clenching tight in his jaw.

“Oh, so you neglected to tell him that he’s going to be a father for his own sake? It had nothing to do with you being too scared to?” Arthur said with a snort.

There was silence from Merlin’s direction for a moment, and Arthur had begun composing a further lecture on the importance of honesty and what Gwaine (who Arthur could grudgingly admit maybe was at least somewhat dependable) did and didn’t deserve, when Merlin said,

“I can’t leave Camelot, and he can’t enter it. What point would there be in telling him?”

“He has a right to know at least,” Arthur said.

“To know he has a child that he will never get to meet?” Merlin said.

It was on the tip of Arthur’s tongue to promise that someday when he was king, Gwaine’s banishment would be lifted and he could come to Camelot again. But such a promise would be treason. No, as long as his father remained king, Arthur was sworn to uphold his decrees—even the stupid and shortsighted ones.

“I still think you should have told him,” he tried at last.

“Thank you for your input,” Merlin gritted out, still refusing to look at Arthur, and then he dug his heels into his horse’s sides and raced ahead, leaving Arthur chewing dust.

**

It occurred to Arthur a short time later that he knew very little about pregnancy. He’d agreed to Merlin’s request not to move forward with his plan until he absolutely had to, but as the weeks had dragged on, it became more and more clear that Arthur had no idea whatsoever when that point might come.

And that was why, some four or five days after he and Merlin had returned (sans Gwaine) from Arthur’s great quest, the prince found himself knocking on Gaius’s door.

He’d sent Merlin off on something of a wild goose chase (and it rankled just a bit that he couldn’t in good conscience order him to muck out the stables as he normally would) after cherries that Arthur was perfectly aware were out of season, so he knew that he was likely to have a good stretch of undisturbed time to converse with Gaius.

The physician was, thankfully, alone and invited him in without hesitation. However, he did raise a dubious eyebrow at Arthur’s list of questions.

“I take it, Sire, that this sudden interest in the particulars of omega pregnancy is born out of concern for Merlin’s condition? He told me that you had discovered his secret.”

Arthur cleared his throat and gazed out the window with a crease in his brow that he hoped looked stern and thoughtful rather than sullen.

“Yes,” Arthur said, “Of course it would have been better if he’d simply come to me at once for help, but now that I am in full possession of the facts—” (my, but Gaius did have a terrible cough; he hoped the old beta wasn’t seriously ill) “—I feel it is my duty to see that Merlin and the child are looked after.”

“You do?” Gaius asked when he’d recovered from his coughing fit.

“Of course,” Arthur said, noting that a few clouds were gathering outside the window. Perhaps Camelot was due an autumn rain shower. “He is my servant, and that makes him my responsibility.”

“I see,” said the physician. “Well, to answer what I believe to be your question, my best estimate places the birth sometime around Imbolc. We’ve a good four months left to go.”

Arthur nodded. Merlin’s…protuberance…had been noticeable when his clothes were wet and clingy but otherwise still managed to stay hidden. The prince had guessed that meant it would be a while longer until it was ready to come out.

“And can you give me any indication of when Merlin will no longer be able to hide his…condition.”

“There’s no way to know for sure, Sire, especially since this is a first pregnancy. No two omegas ever develop in exactly the same way.”

Well, that wasn’t very helpful.

“Considering how slight Merlin is, though,” Gaius continued, “I expect that even a moderate amount of growth in the size of the fetus will be easily marked. Perhaps two weeks, maybe three?”

Arthur nodded. That, at least, made sense. On someone with more natural roundness to their shape, he might not have even noticed the small protrusion. On Merlin, it had been unmistakeable.

He turned at last to Gaius, clasping his hands behind his back and raising his chin.

“I mean to claim the child as my own,” he stated. Gaius, at least, should see the sense in his plan, and perhaps he would serve as an ally in making Merlin see that as well. “That way I can ensure they are both properly looked after.”

Both of Gaius’s formidable eyebrows journeyed upward in response.

“You would make Merlin’s child a member of the royal household?” He almost sounded shocked, and Arthur couldn’t help the scowl that twisted his features.

“It’s the only sensible way forward that I can see.” Apparently the faith he’d put in Gaius had been misplaced.

“Sire,” the old physician said, frowning, “your desire to protect Merlin is admirable, but I beg you not to do anything rash. Think about how it would look.”

Arthur waved that concern away with an annoyed brush of his hand.

“I’d hardly be the first noble to father an illegitimate child on a commoner.”

“Exactly,” Gaius replied, throwing in a bit more eyebrow for emphasis. “We have only too many examples of just how badly these sorts of situations can turn out, for all involved.”

“I can concede,” Arthur said through clenched teeth, “that the situation is not ideal, but I’ll be damned if I let my manservant and an innocent child starve, or worse, end up shackled to some good-for-nothing alpha out of desperation.”

Gaius’s expression turned cloudy for a while as he gazed over at Arthur, and the prince did his best to ignore the heat he felt in his cheeks.

“I can see that you feel strongly about the matter, Sire,” the physician eventually said in a mild tone. “If you won’t be dissuaded, at least take my advice. Think carefully about what kind of future Merlin and his child could expect to have if you go through with this plan. And perhaps ask Merlin whether that’s the future he himself would choose.”

**

Arthur, against his will, found himself following Gaius’s advice.

He followed it when he returned to his chambers and found a bowl of perfectly-ripe cherries waiting for him on his table, and he couldn’t help the unease in his heart as he wondered where in the world Merlin had found them.

He followed it that night as he lay awake in bed, unable to sleep as his mind turned over and over again the question of what consequences might follow were he to claim Merlin’s child as his own.

He followed it the next morning as Merlin threw open his curtains and served his breakfast and generally made far too much noise for such an early hour. He tried to imagine his mornings without all of Merlin’s ruckus and promptly dismissed that as an unproductive line of inquiry.

He followed Gaius’s advice so well that within a week of their conversation, he found himself back before Gaius’s door, waiting for the physician to respond to his knocking so that he could ask him to explain exactly what he’d meant about Merlin’s future. Except Gaius never came, though Arthur waited at his door for nearly half an hour. And later at practice, where he had regretfully released Merlin from his duty of acting as a moving target, Merlin himself seemed so out of sorts that Arthur couldn’t help but ask about it. When it turned out that he and Gaius had fought, Arthur had to wonder, with a twinge of guilt, if perhaps the conflict between them could be laid at his own door.

But then Arthur’s father was poisoned and nearly died, and the culprit turned out to be some old friend of Gaius’s who then mysteriously escaped the punishment for her crimes, and Arthur decided that he didn’t have to listen to a single word Gaius told him ever again.

**

In the end, it was Morgana of all people who forced Arthur’s hand.

One morning a couple of weeks later, he was striding down the corridor leading to the practice yards when Gwen appeared from an alcove and pulled him gently inside.

“Morgana knows,” she hissed, peering around his shoulder and out into the corridor, he assumed to check if anyone was within earshot. Then she leaned back into the alcove and gazed up at him with her dark eyes full of concern. “About Merlin, I mean.”

“That he’s…expecting?” Arthur whispered back, casting his own glance around. The corridor was thankfully empty.

“Yes,” Gwen said, frowning, “and she thinks it’s yours. She tried to warn me that, well, that you’d been unfaithful to me.” She made a face. “I thought you weren’t going to start telling people that yet.”

“I haven’t,” Arthur said, matching her frown. “Morgana must have reached that conclusion on her own, though how she found out about Merlin—“

“It’s his scent,” Gwen sighed. “It’s grown stronger with the pregnancy, and the herbs he uses to hide it aren’t enough to cover it up anymore. Lots of people have started to notice.”

Arthur let out a restrained explosion of exasperation.

“Why doesn’t he just _tell_ me these things?”

When he looked at Gwen’s face again, her eyebrows were raised, and she was regarding him with a quizzical expression.

“I would’ve thought that you’d be one of the first to notice the change, considering how much time you spend around him.”

Arthur opened his mouth and then clamped it shut again. He thought about how he woke in the mornings to the warm, comforting scent of Merlin filling the room and how he snuggled down at night wrapped in its soothing embrace. It didn’t mean anything, of course. It was just how alphas were built. He was meant to find the scent of a pregnant omega pleasant and homey.

“I noticed,” he muttered. “I just didn’t realize other people had too.”

“Well, it’s causing a bit of a stir amongst the palace staff. Most of them aren’t sure what to think, and Merlin isn’t giving many answers to people’s questions.” She shrugged. “He’s made a lot of friends here, though, and I think if push comes to shove, they’ll rally around him.”

Arthur nodded and patted Gwen’s arm absently. It sounded like it was finally time to put his plan into action. He didn’t miss the wrinkle in Gwen’s brow when she gazed down at his hand, but he didn’t have the time just now to worry what it might mean.

“Thanks for telling me,” he whispered then spun on his heel and hurried back up the corridor toward his chambers. Maybe he could catch Merlin still there dawdling over his morning chores.

Unfortunately, instead of Merlin it was Morgana he found hovering outside the door to his chambers.

“You know, I had almost learned to expect better of you,” she said in that cutting tone she had mastered by the time she was twelve. He thanked the gods, as he often did, that they’d fashioned Morgana as an omega because she would have made a _terrifying_ alpha.

“What do you want, Morgana?” he sighed, trying to brush past her and hoping (vainly, he knew) that she would let him.

“Justice,” she growled in a voice so strange that he startled and turned to look at her.

There was something different about Morgana these days. Ever since she’d returned from her yearlong ordeal, there was a certain edge to her, barely hidden beneath the thin veneer of well-bred omega softness. It worried and puzzled him in turns, more so because he didn’t know what had been done to her during her time away. She claimed not to remember. He suspected she only said that to protect them from the truth.

“Justice for whom?” he asked. “You?”

A cold laugh poured from her throat.

“For Merlin, of course,” she said, her smile soft, her eyes less so. “And for the child you gave him. What will Uther say, I wonder? And all the people of Camelot, about their chivalrous, upstanding prince taking advantage of an omega servant?”

“I didn’t take advantage of him,” Arthur hissed, glancing around to make sure no one was overhearing this conversation.

Morgana’s eyes narrowed.

“So you admit that you are responsible.”

He drew himself up to his full height, raised his chin, and squared his shoulders.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I am responsible.”

There was a flash of something in Morgana’s eyes, gone in an instant but troubling all the same.

“Poor Gwen,” was all she said though, shaking her head and offering him a smile that was almost sad but not quite.

“Gwen has nothing to do with this,” he proclaimed.

But Morgana only raised an eyebrow then turned and glided away toward her own quarters in a maddeningly serene manner.

He found Merlin inside, seated at his table with a vambrace in one hand and a polishing cloth in the other, though it looked like the one hadn’t been applied to the other for quite some time now. Arthur slammed the door and was gratified by the way it made Merlin jump and snap his head around.

“Something troubling you, _Mer_lin?” he asked, stomping over and glowering down at the startled servant. “Or is even polishing my armor too much trouble for you now?” (He made a mental note to stop by Gaius’s rooms and inquire whether polishing armor was, in fact, likely to be overly taxing for a pregnant omega.)

Merlin, for his part, scowled and began scrubbing at the vambrace with the cloth as though he were trying to wipe it from existence.

“I’m pregnant, Arthur, not incapacitated,” he muttered. “And I can’t imagine why you’d think something was troubling me. Nothing at all for me to worry about right now! Certainly not Morgana threatening to tell the whole of Camelot about our ‘dirty little secret.’”

“You needn’t worry about that,” Arthur said, “I plan to tell them myself before she has the chance.”

But that only made Merlin drop the poor, abused vambrace again, toss the polishing cloth down on the table, and push himself up from the chair with a loud scrape and an angry glare.

“And were you even going to warn me first?” he shouted, forcing Arthur to take a surprised step back. “Or was I just supposed to find out when your father has me dragged to the dungeons and clapped in chains for daring to seduce his precious son?”

“What?” Arthur said because he’d never heard anything more ridiculous in his life. “_You_ seduce _me_? I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous in my life. And anyway, my father wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe not now,” Merlin said, chin jutting out at a defiant angle. “But sooner or later he will.”

“What possible reason could he have for—“

“My family has magic!” Merlin blurted all of a sudden.

An icy cold washed down the crown of Arthur’s head.

“M-my mother doesn’t, but my father did,” Merlin hurried on. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “That’s why I never met him. He was on the run from Camelot. He…he couldn’t stay with my mother long for fear of leading your father’s men to her.”

Arthur felt his lips curving into a frown. What…did Merlin mean by telling him this now?

“Why—?”

“My child might have magic too,” Merlin said, sounding utterly wretched. “In fact, I think it’s very likely they will. And…and they’ll be only a baby, Arthur, with no idea of laws or consequences. I think…I think the best thing for them would be if I—“ He paused then, a tear at last rolling from each eye. “If I give them up after they’re born. To the druids, I think. They’ll be safe there.”

Arthur turned away and walked to the window. He stared out of it for a while, not really seeing the clear blue sky or the familiar stones of the courtyard. He turned around and walked back to where Merlin still stood, hands braced against the table and head hung down.

He watched his manservant for a while, the way his breath came in hiccuping starts, the way his shoulders shook. The way he dropped one hand from the edge of the table, lowered it and held it against the roundness of his belly, pressing close the fabric of his shirt until Arthur could see how much larger it had grown over these past weeks. No, it wouldn’t be long until he couldn’t hide it anymore.

“Babies can’t be sorcerers,” he tried, but Merlin drowned him out with a choking laugh.

“How would you even know?” he tossed over his shoulder, voice deep and hoarse with emotion. “No one in Camelot who has magic gets to live long enough to have children.”

Arthur took a deep breath and turned away again, toward the fire this time. For some reason it was too painful to look at Merlin right now.

“I already told Morgana that it was mine,” he admitted.

“I know,” he heard Merlin murmur. “I heard. She’s probably on her way to the king right now.”

_Shit_. Arthur hadn’t considered that, but it did sound exactly like the sort of thing Morgana would do. When it came to a question of _justice_, as she’d named it, she never rested until she’d made as big a noise about it as she could. He started toward the door but paused when he remembered. He turned to face his manservant again, who was standing upright now, swiping at the moisture on his cheeks with hasty fingers.

“Merlin—“

“We’ll tell people it was stillborn, when the time comes,” Merlin choked out, meeting his eyes for only the briefest of moments. “I’ll arrange everything.”

Arthur swallowed, feeling a hurt inside his chest that he didn’t want to name, then nodded.

“I’m sorry about your father,” he said because it was what he’d been meaning to say when he’d turned back around.

“Oh,” Merlin said. “Thank you.”

**

Arthur found his father alone in the council chambers, sat at the table with one elbow planted firmly on its worn, solid top and his chin propped on the palm of his hand. His expression, before he raised his eyes to regard Arthur, was one of intense concentration.

When his gaze did latch onto Arthur, the expression soured into disapproval. Arthur straightened his back, shut the door behind him, and strode forward with a confidence he was far from feeling.

“Father,” he began, then found that he had to clear his throat several times before he could get anything further out. “I have a confession to make.”

“If this concerns the fact that you have got a child with your manservant, then I am already apprised of the situation,” the king intoned. Then, to Arthur’s surprise, his lips quirked up to one side, and he gave his head a rueful shake. “If I’d known the boy was an omega, I of course would never have made him your servant. Some temptations are simply too strong to resist.”

“Um,” Arthur said intelligently. “Right.”

“Though I wish to the gods you had resisted,” his father went on, leaning back in his seat with a sigh. “I don’t suppose you’ve been able to convince the boy to terminate the pregnancy.”

“I,” Arthur half-choked out, “hadn’t thought to ask.”

His father’s eyebrow rose.

“It would be the best solution, though if he has even two wits to rub together, he’ll refuse. Producing a living child for you could set him up for life.”

Arthur cleared his throat again, though he was beginning to suspect that the blockage might be a mental rather than a physical one.

“Well,” he tried again, but his father barreled on, unheeding.

“You could, of course, try to deny that you are the child’s sire. Has the boy had any other lovers that you know of?”

Arthur swallowed and made a faint attempt at shaking his head.

“You could invent one, I suppose, but it might not fly. No, I think the best course of action is to quietly marry the boy off to a commoner—preferably one who lives far away from Camelot—and do your best to ensure the child never learns of its true parentage.”

The king was leaning forward again, one hand stretching out toward his quill and inkwell, and Arthur knew that he considered the matter already concluded.

Arthur cleared his throat one more time and hoped for the best.

“Father,” he croaked, and Uther looked up again with brows raised in faint concern. “I mean to raise the child here in the palace. As my own, that is.”

The king’s hand dropped back to the table, his brows lowering too into a thunderous glower.

“Raise the child as your own? Don’t be ridiculous, Arthur. Have you any idea how much trouble a royal bastard could cause for your legitimate heirs?”

“The child is mine,” Arthur asserted in a stronger voice. “It’s a Pendragon, in blood if not in name, and I would not have it grow up ignorant of its true place in the world.”

For some reason, what Arthur thought was a perfectly logical argument caused his father’s nostrils to flare and his eyes to grow wide and his hands to slam down on the table. Before Arthur knew what was happening, his father was there at his throat, shoving a painful finger into his sternum and growling loud enough to deafen him.

“You’re a naive boy, and your ignorance will bring this family to ruin,” he barked straight into Arthur’s face. “Now, get out of my sight and don’t come back until you’ve done as I commanded you.”

Years of military experience had taught Arthur when a tactical retreat was the best course of action. When his father was in this state, there was no reasoning with him.

Still, Arthur knew better than to appear to have conceded defeat.

When he reached the door, he paused and turned to face his father once more. 

“I might be naive, Father, and even ignorant, but I assure you, my priority is always what is best for Camelot and for our family,” and then he quickly ducked into the hallway before his father had a chance to throw the inkwell at his head.

Morgana was standing outside and regarding him with an expression that told him she’d been eavesdropping on the whole exchange.

“He’s right, you know,” she told him in a coldly amused voice. “Bastards cause nothing but trouble for their legitimate siblings.”

He paused and cast a frown in her direction. What would Morgana know of such things? She didn’t even have any siblings, unless Arthur counted. Arthur himself rather thought he did count, for Morgana was the closest thing to a brother or sister he would ever have.

“I don’t know,” Arthur replied, that painful thing shifting inside his chest again. “I think it would have been nice to grow up with a sibling, even if we didn’t share both parents.”

Morgana’s lips tightened, and her eyes darted away. He thought she looked angry, and that was even more puzzling.

“Of course, I’m lucky that I at least had you,” he added. “You’re as dear to me as any sister could be.”

The words had come out more easily than he’d expected them to, but that didn’t mean he wanted to stick around long enough for Morgana to notice how pink his cheeks had grown. He made his escape while she was still facing away, hopefully too overcome by his brotherly love to come up with any kind of response.

**

By the time Merlin served him his dinner later that evening, the news had spread throughout the entire castle—or so his glum servant told him as he plunked the meal down in front of him.

“But how?” Arthur demanded, wiping at a splatter of gravy on the front of his shirt. “And be careful with the wine. I don’t need a red stain to go with this brown one.”

“I don’t know,” Merlin muttered, clanking Arthur’s goblet down and then—thankfully—taking his time to fill it from the wine jug. “Someone must have overheard your conversation with your father.”

Arthur knew for a fact that at least one person had, but why would Morgana want to spread such a story among the palace servants? Nobles didn’t gossip about their own families with their servants, not if they wanted to maintain their respect.

“However they learned of it, what’s done is done now, I suppose,” Arthur mused as he raised his fork and speared a juicy slice of venison.

“Easy for you to say,” Merlin huffed, clanking down the wine jug and standing back to cross his arms over his chest in his most missish manner. “You’re not the one who’s never going to get laid again because everyone thinks the crown prince has staked a claim on you.”

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, there was a hunk of venison stuck in the back of Arthur’s throat.

After a judicious amount of coughing and guzzling wine and Merlin pounding on his back, Arthur regarded his manservant with a watery gaze.

“I haven’t staked a claim on you,” he rasped. “Have I?”

Merlin, curse him, rolled his eyes.

“Of course you have,” he said. “They all think I’m your omega, don’t they, officially or not. No one will lay a finger on me now,” he added with a dejected sigh. “Not when it’s tantamount to treason.”

And, oh gods, Arthur was fairly certain that _Merlin was actually right_.

“We’ll just,” he waved a wild hand in the air and suppressed another round of coughing, “just wait a few months and tell them our, uh, liaison has ended.”

“Oh, sure,” Merlin sneered. “We’ll just call a session of court and make an official announcement, will we? ‘Prince Arthur has decreed that his former omega lover is now cast off and free for the taking.’ That should about do it.”

Arthur let out a noise of exasperation.

“Must you argue with every single thing I say? We’ll figure it out, all right? And it’s not like you’re going to be attracting many people in your current condition anyway.”

And why that should lead to Merlin tearing up and fleeing from the room, Arthur hadn’t the slightest idea (It was probably just pregnancy hormones). He hadn’t meant that Merlin was _ugly _or _unattractive_ or anything of that sort—not that he had ever considered the question of Merlin’s attractiveness. If he did pause for a moment to ask himself whether, as an omega, Merlin had the qualities most alphas might generally look for, he couldn’t deny that those large, blue eyes, framed as they were by long, dark lashes or those sinfully well-defined cheekbones or those full, luscious lips—Well, Arthur wasn’t really interested in that sort of thing, but he supposed _some_ alphas must be, considering how active a love life Merlin apparently had.

He stabbed his knife into a potato, feeling savage glee at the way it split apart and crumbled. _Used to have_, he amended, if only to himself. Because all he’d meant by the comment that Merlin had clearly taken in the entirely wrong way was that most alphas weren’t very interested in omegas who were pregnant with another alpha’s child. It was simply the way alphas were built. A pregnant omega who was not one’s own omega was an omega who was entirely off limits and therefore not the least bit interesting.

And he made sure to tell Merlin as much the following morning once he’d had enough of his breakfast to feel up to the task of confronting the red-eyed, sniffling omega standing cross-armed at the other end of his table.

“Alphas are naturally avoidant of omegas who have been claimed by other alphas,” he explained in an extremely measured and instructive manner. “But that doesn’t mean that no one will ever be attracted to you again, you know, once you aren’t pregnant anymore.”

“That’s great, Arthur.” The words scratched out of Merlin’s throat. “I’ll just be going then, if you don’t need anything else?”

Arthur wasn’t entirely sure that he’d got through to Merlin, so he made sure to bring the matter up again when Merlin brought him his lunch.

“I’m sure there are plenty of alphas out there who think you’re perfectly lovely,” he argued while Merlin vigorously swept the same corner of his chambers over and over again. “I mean, we have very clear proof that at one at least did—“

“I just remembered Gaius needs me right now,” Merlin suddenly said, and promptly disappeared out the door without even bothering to set down the broom.

Arthur still wasn’t convinced that he’d made his point to Merlin, but he was inclined to let the matter lie except that at dinner time, when Merlin peered warily around the edge of his door then shuffled in carrying his dinner tray, he asked,

“Are you going to try to apologize again for telling me I’m not attractive? Cuz if you are, I’d really rather that you didn’t.”

“Apologize?” Arthur snorted. “I haven’t a clue what you mean. There’s nothing to apologize for because I _didn’t_ say you weren’t attractive. You’re perfectly attractive, Merlin. I only meant—“

But it was at that moment that the penny dropped, and Arthur understood that he had just committed a grave error. His whole body flushed with an uncomfortable, prickly heat that was exactly matched by the tomato-y color Merlin’s face had just turned.

“Ahem,” Arthur cleared his throat and turned his attention to the dinner tray that still hovered a few inches above the surface of the table. “Perhaps you’d better leave that here and take the rest of the evening off. You must be tired.”

“Yes,” Merlin agreed at once. “Very tired,” and dropped the tray in front Arthur and retreated with a haste that would have put at least of couple of the knights to shame.

**

Fortunately, the next day preparations for the upcoming tournament began in earnest, and Arthur and Merlin both were far too busy to have time for anything resembling a conversation. There were also Arthur’s concerns about his father’s ultimatum to serve as a distraction. The prince had steeled himself for another argument the next time he’d dared enter his father’s presence, but instead he’d found the king sat at his table chatting and laughing with Morgana, seemingly in perfectly good spirits. So far, nothing more had been said on the matter of marrying Merlin off, but Arthur wasn’t fooled. Uther never gave anything up that easily.

And when, a few days later, the king put in his surprise appearance at the tournament, Arthur couldn’t help feeling that their previous argument had something to do with it.

That feeling grew even stronger when the two ended up pitted against one another in the semifinals. Arthur couldn’t miss the unholy glee in his father’s eye as he told him he was going to need his practice. It was clear the king had something he felt he needed to prove to his only son.

“You’ve got to let him win,” Merlin urged him later that night in the privacy of his chambers.

“If I let him win, he’ll only take it as further proof that he’s right and I’m wrong,” Arthur spat out. He was seated at the table with his face cradled against the palms of both hands.

“About what?” came Merlin’s voice from the other end of the table.

Oh, right. They’d never got around to having that particular conversation. Arthur took a deep breath and gritted his teeth.

“About you,” he said, not daring to look up. “He commanded me to either convince you to end your pregnancy or marry you off to a commoner and pretend the baby isn’t mine.”

There was a silence that lasted for far too long before he heard Merlin let out a soft, “Oh.”

A moment later, he heard footsteps approaching, followed by the sound of a chair being pulled out and Merlin collapsing into it.

“I considered that, actually,” he heard Merlin say in a strange, too-quiet voice. “Asked Gaius if he could give me a potion that would get rid of it.”

Arthur couldn’t help looking up then. Merlin was leaning against the tall, leather-bound back of the chair, one hand rubbing at his lower back as though it were sore and the other half-buried in his hair. His gaze was fixed on the wall but also somewhere far away.

“He said there were such things,” Merlin went on, frowning, “but that they tended to be dangerous and had nasty side effects. Told me it was better not to try.”

Arthur considered this.

“If there had been a potion you could take, one that wasn’t dangerous and didn’t have bad side effects, do you think you would have?”

Merlin rolled his eyes toward him, frowning for a moment before he looked away again.

“Yeah,” he said. “Probably. It’s not like I planned to have a child right now…if ever. What do I even have to offer them? My life is no life for a child.”

“I could give them a good life,” Arthur heard himself saying. “If you don’t send them to the druids, I’ll find them a nurse who can be discreet. We’ll keep them under careful watch until I can make it safe for them here in Camelot.”

He heard the heavy breath Merlin let out and dared another small peek in his manservant’s direction. He was staring at the wall again, his eyes filling up with tears.

“And how long will that be, Arthur? Your father is healthy and strong, and as long as he is king, no child of mine will be safe in Camelot.”

Arthur had no answer to that. The best he could manage was to reach across the table and draw Merlin’s hand into a comforting grasp. Merlin kept his eyes fixed on the wall, but after a moment, very briefly, he returned the pressure of Arthur’s hand.

**

Arthur let his father win.

It was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do in his life, throwing the fight when it would have been so easy to take the win. But there was no point in antagonizing his father further, and maybe (he hoped) letting him have his victory would soften him enough to make him see reason where Merlin was concerned.

What he hadn’t expected were his father’s words at the dinner table after the tournament had concluded.

“Arthur has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is ready to be king.”

The way his chest filled with pride to hear his father say such words—the feeling was almost unbearable. But what came next was even more unbearable.

“I can only hope that someday when you have sons of your own, they show you the same courtesy,” the king told him with a wistful little smile.

“Doesn’t seem like that day is very far off,” came Morgana’s voice, accompanied by a tinkling laugh. Arthur and his father both turned to her. “Though I suppose Merlin might give Arthur a daughter rather than a son. Let’s hope she’s an alpha at least, or barring that a beta. How disappointing it must be to have a daughter who is merely an omega.”

“Not disappointing,” Arthur heard his father say in an oddly strained voice. “I’m sure if…if I had been so blessed, I would have cherished such a daughter as though she were the most precious gift I’d ever been given.”

There was something very brittle in the smile Morgana gave the king then. It reminded Arthur that Morgana was somebody’s omega daughter, a man who, by all accounts, really had cherished her with all his heart. So why was she gazing at Uther like that, as though no one in all the world had ever thought to love her?

“It is unfortunate then, Sire,” she said in a voice sharp enough to cut glass, “that you never were so blessed.”

There was a breathless pause before his father spoke again.

“Who told you?”

Arthur’s heart fell then, from its usual spot inside his chest all the way down into the pit of his stomach.

Morgana made a disgusted noise and started to rise from the table, but Uther—_their father’s_ hand stretched out and took hold of her arm to stay her.

“Of course,” she snarled at him, her beautiful features twisting. “Of course that’s the only thing you care about.”

She—Arthur’s _sister_—was gazing at the king with such utter hatred in her eyes, that Arthur’s hand moved to the pommel of his sword without his telling it to.

“Morgana,” Uther said, his voice cracking on her name, and she wrenched her arm free of his grasp and fled from the room.

It took Arthur only a moment to decide whether to stay and demand answers of his father or to run after his sister.

She was fast, but only one of them spent hours on the training field every day, and he caught up to her easily.

“Morgana,” he called when she was within reach. “Please, wait!”

“I have nothing to say to you,” she tossed over her shoulder and put her head down and sped up.

“Well, I have lots to say to you,” he yelled and with a burst of speed, passed her and threw out his arms to block her way ahead.

Her chest was heaving, and there was moisture rolling down her face—sweat or tears, he wasn’t sure.

“Go on then,” she panted with a sneer. “This ought to be good.”

“I didn’t know you were my sister,” he started. “But I wish I had. You and father are the only family I’ve ever known, and when you disappeared, it was like I’d lost a piece of myself with you. I’m sorry if I haven’t always been a good brother to you, but I’ll make it up to you if you’ll give me the chance.”

She laughed at him, and the sound stabbed straight through his chest like a blade.

“You want to make it up to me, Brother?” she asked. “Then relinquish your crown to me. I’m the elder. It’s my right.”

Arthur was so surprised his arms began to fall, and Morgana took advantage of his distraction to try to dart past him. But he was far too quick for her. He reached out and caught her in his arms, holding her close against him.

“You really want to rule Camelot?” he asked, staring down into her scornful features, trying to understand this sister he’d just gained—someone he’d known for so many years and yet apparently didn’t know at all. “Why?”

“Let me go!” she shrieked, and he had to wonder what kind of crowd they must be attracting.

“I will, if you’ll answer my question,” he insisted, only holding her closer. She fought him, tried to raise her hands to scratch at him, tried to stomp on his feet or kick at his shins, but he held her arms pinned safely to her sides, and his thick boots and her long skirts hampered her other efforts.

“Fine,” she gasped when she realized she couldn’t struggle free. “Fine, I’ll tell you why.”

And what followed was a moment that would remain seared on Arthur’s memory until the very last moment of his life.

As he looked down into his sister’s face, he saw in her eyes not the hatred she had turned on their father but something else, something he feared even more: a bright flash, a golden glow, and then he was flying backward, away from her, and the next moment his head was crashing against a stone wall, and everything went black.

**

The first thing Arthur knew when he woke was that he was safe and had nothing to fear. Something soft rested upon his forehead, and there was warmth all around him, and a familiar, beloved scent. He sighed, but the sound seemed to wake him further, which made him aware of the aching and pounding inside his head. 

“Arthur?” came a distant voice, and it was familiar too. He wanted to open his eyes and see who was there, but even the thought seemed to make the aching in his head worse.

He let out a groan.

“He seems to be waking up,” said the voice.

“I’ll go and fetch Gaius,” said a second voice, and this one was familiar too, and higher pitched. “You stay with him.”

Footsteps, and the opening and closing of a door somewhere, and then the soft thing on his forehead shifted.

“You hit your head pretty hard,” the first voice murmured. “I bet it’s hurting a lot right about now.”

“Merlin?” he tried to mumble, but it didn’t come out sounding like much of anything.

The soft thing on his forehead moved slowly, rubbing back and forth, and it was a lovely, soothing sensation. He sighed again and let himself sink back into unconsciousness.

**

The next time Arthur woke, he came to full consciousness far more abruptly. The aching in his head was still there, but the soft thing on his forehead was gone. His eyelids struggled open, but when they finally cracked apart, there was still only darkness.

In a moment of panic, Arthur tried to sit up, but just raising his head from his pillow caused a wave of sickening pain to roil through his skull. He lay back down at once but opened his eyes all the way. That was when he realized the darkness was simply the dark of night with no candles and the fire in his hearth burning low. He could feel now the chill in the air of his chamber and wondered why Merlin hadn’t built the fire back up before retiring for the night.

The thought of Merlin jostled something free in his memory: a scent, a hand on his forehead, the sound of soft, deep breathing.

He blinked and listened closely—yes, that _was_ the sound of breathing coming from mere inches away. He sucked in a deep breath of his own, and his senses were flooded with _Merlin_.

His manservant was asleep in the bed beside him.

He lay there for a while, wishing he could turn his head to see but wishing not to feel that nauseating pain again even more. Bits and pieces of information floated up to the front of his thoughts, and he slowly began to put together where he was and why.

Morgana.

Morgana was his sister. All these years, thinking he was an only child, that Morgana was merely his father’s ward, and all along she’d been his sister. And all along, his father must have known, and he’d never said. Never mind that he’d never told Arthur. He’d never even told _Morgana_.

Morgana…who was a sorceress.

Who’d used magic against him.

He wished he knew how long he’d been lying here in bed. It felt like it had been mere moments, but he could remember waking earlier, and it had been daylight then. When Morgana had…attacked him…it had been night time. At least a day must have passed.

Where was Morgana now? Locked in the cells maybe? Or—and his heart clenched at the thought—would Uther have sentenced her death? What if the sentence had already been carried out? What if Morgana was already…?

“Merlin,” he was rasping out in a hoarse voice before he’d even made the decision to do so. “Merlin, wake up.”

Talking hurt, but at least it didn’t hurt as much as moving had.

There was stirring in the bed beside him, the rustle of linens shifting and the soft grunts and mumbles of Merlin waking up. Arthur hadn’t known until now that sometime during all their time together he had memorized exactly what sounds Merlin made when he was waking.

“Merlin,” he said again, impatient.

“Wha?” came Merlin’s indistinct reply.

“Wake up and tell me everything I’ve missed,” Arthur hissed.

“Ar-her?” Merlin’s voice mumbled from somewhere very close to his ear. “Yer awake.”

“Brilliant observation,” Arthur said and then groaned as a fresh wave of pain rolled through his head. “Gods my head hurts.”

Then Merlin’s face appeared above him, dim and vague in the faint light filling the room. 

“You’ve been out more than a day,” Merlin told him, and he could just make out the crease between the other man’s eyebrows. “But Gaius said that since you woke earlier and tried to talk to me it was likely there was no serious damage.”

“That’s good,” Arthur said, strangely disconcerted by having Merlin’s face so near his own. He could feel the warmth of Merlin’s body where it leaned against his side, separated only from his own body by the covers. “And Morgana?”

Merlin grimaced and then his face moved away, leaving Arthur feeling oddly bereft.

“Gone,” Merlin said, then fortunately elaborated, “she fled the palace after attacking you. The king has sent out several patrols, but she has yet to be found.”

Arthur started to nod and then thought better of it.

“I see,” he said instead. He didn’t know whether to feel more relieved that she hadn’t been executed or worried that she was loose out there somewhere, full of magic and hatred for the king. The thought of it almost made him want to cry.

“Anyway,” Arthur said, “what are you doing in my bed again?”

“Again?” Merlin asked, and then, “Oh, that. That was months ago. I’d forgotten already.”

He heard a rustling again, and then the bed beside him dipped a bit under Merlin’s weight. The tosser had had the gall to lie back down in Arthur’s bed.

“Just got tired of sitting in that hard chair. Being pregnant hurts, you know. My back aches all the time and my feet, and this baby kicks really hard. Anyway, I figured everyone thinks we’re lovers anyway, so what could be the harm in having a little kip?”

_No harm at all_, Arthur thought, closing his eyes and breathing deep of the scent that hung heavy in the air.

“Well, since you’re here,” he murmured, “perhaps you could do something about the fire? I don’t really fancy the idea of waking up with icicles in my nostrils come morning.”

“Oh,” came Merlin’s voice, “I forgot.”

Arthur listened as the omega dragged himself from the bed, muttering about cold stone floors and sore backs and princes who couldn’t be arsed to do anything for themselves, and a slow smile crept across his face. When the fire was roaring once again and Arthur could feel the cold in the room beginning to retreat, he heard Merlin’s shuffling steps make their way back over to the bed, but rather than moving toward the other side of the bed, they came to a stop on Arthur’s side, and then he heard the sound of Merlin easing himself down into a chair.

“I thought you said that chair was hard,” Arthur objected.

“It is,” came Merlin’s retort.

“Then why are you sitting in it?” Arthur said, and then because it was the middle of the night and he was a bit dizzy and nothing felt entirely real, he added, “Come back to bed.”

For a moment, the only sounds in the room were the crackle of the fire and Arthur’s own harsh breathing, but then the chair beside him creaked, and Merlin grumbled something about making him get up again when he’d only just sat down, and then his footsteps shuffled around the end of the bed, and it dipped under his weight as he settled once again beneath the covers on Arthur’s other side.

“I should probably go get Gaius and tell him you’re fully awake now,” came Merlin’s sleepy voice after a moment.

“If you go get Gaius right now,” Arthur murmured back, “I will fire you.”

“As your manservant or as your lover?”

“Both,” Arthur yawned, “now be quiet and let me go back to sleep.”

“All right,” Merlin yawned too. “But if you never wake up again, it’ll be your own fault.”

**

It took two more days of bed rest and regular check-ups before Gaius gave the go ahead for Arthur to resume his normal activities.

“Except for training,” the old physician ordered with a glower that brooked no opposition. “Not for at least a week. We don’t need your brain getting jostled about anymore than it already has been.”

Arthur was glad enough just to be able to attend council again and hear updates about the search for Morgana. The news, unfortunately, was that there was still no news. The even worse news was that the king was not well.

He’d noticed it himself the morning after he’d first woken up when his father had come to visit and see with his own eyes that Arthur was awake and lucid.

“Thank the gods,” the king had half-sobbed, kneeling beside Arthur’s bed and clasping his hand in both his own. “I couldn’t have born it if I’d lost you both in a single night.”

“I’m fine, Father,” Arthur said, touched and uncomfortable at the same time. “It was just a little bump on the head.”

“It was sorcery,” the king said, sounding as though the words tore at his throat on their way out. “Your…your sister used sorcery against you.”

“My sister?” Arthur had prompted, hoping both to get some answers and to redirect his father’s troubled train of thought.

“I should have told you,” Uther whispered, dropping his head down to rest against their clasped hands. “I should have told you both. I’ve done you both a great wrong.”

And no matter how Arthur tried to console him or gently prod him for more information, his father simply went on in the same vein, repeating over and over again how this was all his fault and how he’d wronged Morgana and Arthur both.

That morning when Arthur had first strode into the council meeting with only a discreet bandage about his head to show that anything had ever been wrong with him, the relief he saw in the faces of the gathered lords and advisors was obvious. He’d believed, at first, that they were merely relieved to see their prince alive and well, but once the session began, a greater understanding dawned on him. The king sat slumped in his chair at the head of the table, listless, barely responding to reports, to questions, to debates about how best to move forward. And every time the king failed to provide an answer to a matter, great or small, all eyes would turn instead to Arthur.

For the first time in his life, Arthur felt what it really meant to rule—to be the one who must decide, the one who must hold the ultimate blame if the decision was wrong.

He admitted to himself, later, alone in his chambers, that he was utterly terrified.

He admitted it again that night in bed to Merlin.

(A strange thing had happened where, the night after Gaius had said Arthur would be fine but needed more bed rest, Merlin had cleared away his dinner things and puttered about the room completing his usual evening chores, and then he’d shut the door to Arthur’s chambers and climbed into bed beside him, and when it had become clear that neither of them had anything to say about the new arrangement, that had simply been that.)

“I’ve been preparing for this all my life,” he murmured after Merlin had snuffed the candles and slid beneath the covers. “And now the moment’s come, and I feel paralyzed by fear. What if I do the wrong thing? What if I bring my family, my people, _Camelot_ to ruin because I made the wrong decisions?”

He felt movement beside him, underneath the linens, and a moment later, Merlin’s hand slid into his. Arthur turned his head (gingerly) to seek out his face in the dark. Merlin had turned toward him, one cheek pressed into the pillows, the other lifted in a half-smile.

“You won’t make the wrong decisions,” Merlin said. “You have a good heart, Arthur, and many wise advisors to guide you. And you have me,” he added, the smile deepening.

“Do I?” Arthur asked, his heart suddenly pounding inside of his chest. “Do I have you, Merlin?”

The smile didn’t exactly vanished. It changed, shifted into something soft and breathless.

“You’ve always had me,” the man in bed beside him whispered. “And you always will.”

“You can’t leave me, Merlin.” The words were wrenched from that hurting place deep inside his chest. “Never leave me.”

“Never,” Merlin agreed, his eyes catching the faint firelight and seeming for a moment to glow. “I’ll never leave you, Arthur.”

And Arthur tightened his hand around Merlin’s and pulled him close, and his other hand found Merlin’s cheek and drew his face across the pillows until their lips could meet. And the thing was, Arthur hadn’t kissed all that many people before and wasn’t sure if he was very good at it, and for the briefest of moments he worried that maybe he could do that wrong too and ruin this. But then he felt Merlin’s breath soft against his skin and Merlin’s lips warm and open against his, and he decided none of it seemed the least bit wrong. (And anyway, in his experience, between the two of them, Merlin was the one far more likely to ruin things.)

One of Merlin’s hands was clutching at his chest, and the other had let go its grip on Arthur’s hand to reach around his back and pull him in close. Merlin’s lips had left his mouth to make their way across his cheek and down to his throat, and whisper, “Arthur…Arthur” over and over again.

Arthur was fairly certain his lips were doing the same with Merlin’s name because the only thought his mind could form right now was _Merlin_. Merlin was _here._ Merlin was _his_. 

Merlin was his.

“Arthur,” Merlin was saying, and his hand had made its way around to Arthur’s hip, “Arthur, do you want to…?” The hand hovered there, above the joining between hip and thigh, as though it wanted something, wanted to move further, and then Arthur understood what Merlin’s hand wanted, what Merlin was asking him.

His blood rushed in his ears and throat and pounded low, between his thighs. He wanted to, yes, he very much wanted to, and the only thing stopping him was fear. Because he’d never, ever before, and what if he was bad at it? What if Merlin didn’t like it with him? What if Merlin didn’t like it, and Merlin decided that maybe Arthur wasn’t worth sticking around for after all?

Merlin’s hand was on the move again, sliding up to Arthur’s waist.

“It’s okay,” he was whispering into Arthur’s throat. “We don’t have to.”

And Arthur was nodding and agreeing because…well, because he was a coward, and it was easier to just do as Merlin told him, to just go along with whatever Merlin wanted. Except—

“Do _you_ want to?” Arthur breathed, sounding as winded as if he’d just come off the training field.

The laugh that escaped Merlin’s throat tickled Arthur’s shoulder with warm air.

“Yes,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter. Another day, if you want to—“

“I want to,” Arthur growled, “now,” and he backed this up by pulling Merlin into his arms and rolling them over until Merlin lay on top of him, nothing between them but the roundness of his belly and a few tangles of bedsheet (and all of their night clothes, and maybe one of Merlin’s arms).

“Oh,” Merlin gasped and shifted his weight back until his bottom came to rest on top of Arthur’s lap. “Well, in that case.”

It was fortunate that Merlin didn’t seem to require a response to that because all Arthur could concentrate on at the moment was how good it felt to have Merlin sitting on top of his hard cock and, after that, how good it felt to have Merlin’s arse rubbing against his hard cock, and then how good it felt when Merlin put his hand inside Arthur’s pajama bottoms and pulled him out and slid him inside—

“I should have known you’d make me do all the work as usual,” Merlin panted.

“I,” Arthur said and paused because words were still kind of hard, “don’t know what to do,” he finished because he felt too good to lie right now.

Merlin fell still, which was the exact opposite thing from what Arthur wanted right now, and he tried to put together enough words to tell Merlin that.

“Is this your first time?” Merlin asked, sounding somewhat awed.

“Yes,” he said because he hoped the truth would make Merlin stop talking and start moving again.

“Oh,” Merlin said, gazing down at him with a look that made Arthur turn his head, suddenly embarrassed to meet Merlin’s eyes. “Well,” Merlin continued, “you could start by moving your hips.”

And that turned out to be a winning suggestion because not only did it feel amazing, but it caused Merlin’s breath to hitch in these soft half-moans that Arthur thought he could happily listen to for the rest of his life. 

“Arthur,” Merlin cried and leaned down and caught Arthur’s lips with his lips, and Arthur’s hands decided that was a good moment to take hold of Merlin’s hips, which turned out to be another very good thing to do as it gave him better leverage to push deeper and deeper inside—

“_Fuck_,” Merlin moaned into his ear, and that was it for Arthur. He pushed in one final time, and some heavenly combination of his knot and Merlin’s passage locked them together, and Arthur peaked with Merlin’s lips whispering his usual nonsense directly into Arthur’s ear.

It was some time before Arthur came down enough to note that the space in between them had become a sticky mess and that there was nothing either of them could do about it while tied. So he rolled them both onto their sides with Merlin’s thighs curled tight around his hips, and for a while they just held each other, faces close together so they could breathe the same air.

Eventually, they were able to part again, though the feeling of slipping from inside of Merlin left Arthur with a strange sense of loss. He’d felt like he belonged there.

Merlin started to pull away, mumbling something about cleaning them up, but Arthur tightened his arms around him and drew him into another kiss, which started out slow and easy but warmed very quickly.

“Gods,” Merlin groaned into his cheek, “I can’t believe you’re already hard again.”

“Um,” Arthur said, trailing a palm down Merlin’s damp back, “did you like it? Would you want to do it again?”

“_Gods_,” Merlin said and pushed him down onto his back.

The second time, Arthur felt he’d got the hang of things, and he discovered at least three new sounds that he’d never known Merlin could make but that he very much wanted to hear again. The best, at least so far, was the choked off groan Merlin let out when Arthur’s hand brought him off for a second time just as his knot slipped inside and held again.

This time, they both collapsed onto the bed, too exhausted to even raise their heads, and Arthur’s knot shrank back to normal size quickly—and he was thankful when they could finally clean up (with the assistance of Arthur’s night shirt and wash basin), but he still missed the feeling of being inside Merlin. He made a mental note to find a way to fit being inside Merlin into his daily schedule from now on.

“Don’t tell me you want to go a third time,” Merlin mumbled into his chest and snuggled deeper into the circle of Arthur’s arms. “The baby’s already excited enough. I’m gonna be awake half the night with the kicking already.”

Arthur stopped breathing for a moment. He’d forgotten about the baby, had only thought about the swelling of Merlin’s abdomen when it had got in the way of him trying to get at Merlin’s cock.

“Is it…did we hurt it or…?”

He heard a snort of laughter from down below.

“No, Arthur,” came Merlin’s answer, muffled by the skin of Arthur’s chest. “The baby’s fine. It just gets active when I do.”

“That’s good.” Arthur let himself relax again, let himself feel how deliciously worn out his body felt and how perfectly Merlin’s angles seemed to fit into his own.

“Also, you’re as hot as a furnace and squeezing me tight enough to suffocate me,” Merlin muttered and then wriggled out of his arms. “No offense,” he added with a jaw-cracking yawn, “but I think I’ll stick to my side of the bed.”

“Fine,” Arthur grunted, frowning (_not_ pouting; manly Princes of Camelot never pouted) to himself. 

“Good night,” came Merlin’s voice, soft and sounding amused. “Sweet dreams.”

“Sweet dreams,” Arthur said back, one side of his frown twitching upward in spite of himself.

And he did, indeed, have very sweet dreams that night.

**

As it turned out, finding time to be inside of Merlin every day was very easy, largely because Merlin was so accommodating when it came to Arthur’s busy schedule. This might have been related to the fact that Arthur’s busy schedule required Merlin to be at his side throughout the majority of the day.

It didn’t take long for Arthur to discover that there were multiple ways for him to be inside of Merlin and that, in fact, sometimes _not_ being inside Merlin could be just as enjoyable (and that, having Merlin _inside him_ was its own entire category of incredible).

And it was probably just as well that things with Merlin were going so swimmingly because it seemed that every other part of the crown prince’s life was determined to fall apart.

Morgana was, officially, still nowhere to be found, but their spies within Cenred’s court told a very different story. (It was Merlin who held him after he stumbled into his chambers, blind with tears that he hadn’t been able to let fall while listening to the report).

The king’s condition had deteriorated to the point that he no longer left chambers, and it was all but certain that if he didn’t show marked signs of improvement soon, Arthur would officially be named Prince Regent. (The first time the subject had been raised in council, it was all Arthur could do not to slap the advisor for the insolence of his suggestion, but he’d restrained himself because he couldn’t deny that the man was right).

There were skirmishes along the borders—supposed bandits that were undoubtedly Cenred’s men in disguise and a slaver named Jarl who kept raiding outlying villages.

And there was the morning that Arthur stepped into the corridor shortly after Merlin had whisked away his (late) breakfast dishes and ran straight into Gwen. She started to apologize and then stopped mid-sorry, leaned in close, took a delicate sniff, and then excused herself. Arthur realized with a sharp pang of guilt that he hadn’t thought of Gwen in weeks. 

He started to follow her, to talk to her, to explain—only to discover that there was a guard rushing up the corridor toward him.

“Sire,” the man called, breathless. “There’s a messenger. From King Cenred.”

A Camelot patrol, according to the signed and sealed letter from the hand of Cenred himself,had trespassed on Cenred’s lands and been slaughtered to a man.

No one had to tell Arthur who had been in that patrol. He’d drafted the patrol assignments himself and knew the name and face of every man he’d just lost.

“It’s as good as a declaration of war,” he told Merlin that night over dinner. “Those men weren’t in Cenred’s lands, and he knows it. He crossed into Camelot’s territory and killed our men on our own soil, and he’s daring me to let him get away with it. He’s been daring us for months now with these thinly-disguised bandit and slaving raids. If I don’t respond— If I don’t _retaliate_, he’s only going to escalate his encroachment.”

Across the table, Merlin regarded him with a grim gaze.

“So we retaliate?” he asked.

“I don’t see any other choice,” Arthur sighed, feeling too exhausted even to lift his goblet for a drink. He’d already argued this same point for hours with the council, and still nothing had been decided. “How can Morgana take such a man’s side against her own people, her own family even? Has magic corrupted her so much?”

“Not magic,” Merlin said, so quickly that Arthur’s head snapped up.

“Then what?”

Merlin stared at him for a long time, the firelight flickering in his eyes, and his teeth worrying at his lower lip.

“What else could have changed her so much from the person I used to know?” Arthur pressed, desperate for some answer, some clue that could point the way toward a solution.

Finally, Merlin drew in a long breath and let it out again slowly.

“Morgana was born with magic,” he said, voice quiet but firm. “All those dreams of hers? They weren’t normal nightmares. They were visions. They were her magic forcing its way out against her will.”

It took Arthur a moment to realize that his jaw had dropped and he’d stopped breathing. He gasped a breath in and closed his mouth.

“How do you know that?” he demanded.

A muscle rippled in Merlin’s jaw.

“Gaius told me,” he said, still in that soft, steady tone. “He tried to hide her magic, even from Morgana herself, but it grew too strong. Do you remember that night there was a fire in her room?” He didn’t wait for Arthur to nod before he continued. “It was her own magic that started it, no outside attack, just her suppressed magic trying to find an outlet.”

“Why—” Arthur tried, paused, tried again. “Why did I never know this?”

Merlin just stared at him.

“You know why,” he murmured.

And Arthur did know why. He was horrified by the thought of it, but he knew. Under his father’s laws, use of magic was punishable by death. To speak openly about Morgana’s magic would have been as good as signing her death warrant.

“It was fear that corrupted Morgana,” Merlin said then. “The king’s fear of magic and her own fear of what would happen to her if he ever learned she had it.”

Arthur stood from the table then, his dinner still untouched. Before he knew quite what he was doing, he was leaving his chambers, making his way down the familiar corridor and the turret stairs, knocking on the old physician’s door.

When Gaius opened it to him with a faint, inquiring rise of his eyebrows, he said, “Tell me everything you know about magic, and I mean everything, Gaius.”

**

He found himself in his father’s room late that night, where the king sat in bed but didn’t sleep, as he often did these days.

Arthur pulled a chair close to his father’s bedside and stared into the face of the man who had formed the bedrock of Arthur’s entire life. He didn’t expect his father to look back at him. He hadn’t for a long time now. Instead of looking, he sat, head propped against the headboard of his bed, eyes staring forward, focused somewhere very distant.

“You lied to me,” Arthur told him, and the moment the words were out, his chest heaved with a sob. But he wouldn’t cry, not in front of the king. “You lied to me about everything. Morgana and magic…my mother. Everything you ever taught me has been founded upon lies.”

He waited, studying the face of the man before him, lined with age and care—grey, blank. There wasn’t even the faintest flicker to show that he’d heard Arthur’s words.

“How many people have died for your lies?” Arthur asked. “How much safer and more peaceful could Camelot have been if you hadn’t been so blinded by hatred and grief? How much— How much innocent blood have my own hands spilled at your command?”

The king gave him no answer. Perhaps no answer was needed because Arthur already knew. He already knew far, far too much.

**

He thought Merlin was already asleep when he slid into bed beside him hours later.

But then Merlin turned his head toward him and let out a shuddering breath that told Arthur he’d been crying.

“Arthur,” he rasped. “Arthur, I have to tell you—”

“Not tonight, Merlin,” Arthur said. “I can’t. Not tonight,” he repeated.

So Merlin didn’t tell him, and instead Arthur put his arms around him and buried his face against Merlin’s shoulder and wept all of the tears that he’d refused to give to his father.

**

The next day, Arthur was named Prince Regent, by official order of the King’s Council. The council had occasion to second-guess their decision when the new Regent’s first order of business was the drafting of new laws decriminalizing the use of magic.

“But, Sire,” one of the lords said, hand held against his chest as though he were close to fainting, “you’ll be undoing your father’s entire life’s work.”

Arthur had to take a moment to steady himself before answering.

“I’m doing what is necessary to ensure the safety and tranquility of my lands and my people.”

“But magic is dangerous!” cried another.

“So is water,” Arthur returned. “And we haven’t made any laws against using that, have we?”

“Yes, well, people need water to live,” the first lord pointed out.

“And some people have magic from birth and have no choice but to use it,” Arthur said. “Would you have me make it illegal for some of my people even to exist?”

“But your father—” someone else began, but to Arthur’s relief, they were interrupted by a knock on the council chamber door.

“Enter!” he called, trying his best not to sound as glad as he felt.

He gave up trying when the person who strode through the door was one he had already given up for dead.

“Leon!” he cried, rushing to the knight and clasping him in a strong embrace. “You’re alive!”

For several minutes, there was only embracing and rejoicing and a few misty eyes, and then someone thought to ask Leon what had happened. The story he told sobered them all at once. Only a day before, Arthur might have questioned the druids’ motives. Why would they heal a knight of Camelot, one of those very men who had for so many years persecuted and murdered their kind?

But he remembered very well his interview with Gaius the night before, what Gaius had told him about the druids and their vows to do no harm. As Leon spoke, Arthur found himself seeking out the physician’s gaze. There was a look in his eye that Arthur couldn’t mistake.

“The druids are a peaceful people, Sire,” Gaius said when Leon had finished speaking. “Even if they did use magic to heal Sir Leon, I do not believe they intended either him or us any ill by it.”

Arthur nodded.

“You speak wisely, Gaius,” he said, and when some of the lords looked mutinous, he fixed them with an iron gaze that none of them seemed able to counter. “Now, Leon,” he said, turning a much gentler gaze on the pale knight, “I know you must be exhausted, but what can you tell us about Cenred’s attack on you and the patrol?”

**

The moment they were alone in his quarters that afternoon, Merlin was on him. He placed his hands on either side of Arthur’s face and searched him with eyes half-frightened, half-hopeful.

“Are you really going to repeal the ban on magic?” he demanded.

“I am” Arthur said, holding his gaze. He raised a trembling hand to rest it on the side of Merlin’s burgeoning belly. “So don’t give the child away. Keep it here. Raise it in the palace. I promise I’ll be a good father to it.”

“Arthur,” Merlin said, and his voice cracked. A tear rolled down each cheek. “Arthur, I have magic.”

His whole body stilled, and he waited for the fear, for the anger, for the sense of betrayal. They would come at any moment, he was sure.

“It’s not just the baby or my father. I’m magic,” Merlin whispered. “I use it for you, Arthur, only for you. To protect you, and Camelot.”

“Show me,” Arthur commanded.

Merlin nodded, eyes still locked on Arthur’s as though, as long as he didn’t look away, everything would be all right. He lowered a hand to Arthur’s where it cupped the side of his belly and curled Arthur’s hand into a fist. Then he raised the clenched fingers to his lips, and Arthur couldn’t help the gasp that escaped him when Merlin’s eyes flashed gold.

“Open your hand,” Merlin whispered, never taking his eyes off Arthur’s face.

It was up to Arthur to break their locked gazes, to turn his eyes toward his trembling hand. His heart was pounding hard and high in his throat, and he felt sick and dizzy. He opened his hand.

Bright blue and flashing like a jewel, a tiny butterfly flexed its wings against his palm and then flitted up into the air between them. Arthur’s eyes followed its fluttering path, up, above their heads, dipping low and rising again, finally coming to rest on the mantelpiece above the crackling fire.

Slowly, he turned his head back toward Merlin. Merlin’s one hand still clutched at his, seeming afraid to let it go. His other hand stayed tucked against Arthur’s cheek.

Arthur was still waiting for that sense of betrayal, for that fear that had all but consumed him when he’d seen that same flash within Morgana’s eyes. But Merlin wasn’t attacking him, and no matter how he tried to imagine it, he couldn’t believe that Merlin ever _would_.

“I think we’d both better take a seat,” Arthur said finally, amazed by how calm his voice sounded. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

**

So it wasn’t only Arthur’s father who had lied to him, and it wasn’t only Gaius, or only Morgana. Even Merlin had lied to him, countless times about countless things.

He didn’t know what it was about him that made the people he loved afraid to tell him the truth.

He supposed in the end it all went back to Uther and all of his lies. If only the king had been honest. If only he’d placed the blame for Ygraine’s death where it truly belonged. If only—

But there was nothing fruitful to be gained from wishing for a different past.

“No more lies,” he told Merlin sometime early in the morning when the sorcerer had finally run out of things to confess.

“No more lies,” Merlin agreed, looking as wrung out as Arthur felt.

“Come on,” Arthur sighed then. “It’s long past time you were abed.”

And when they climbed into bed and Arthur pulled Merlin into his arms, for once Merlin didn’t pull away but let himself be held until they both fell into an exhausted sleep.

**

The strike was meant to be swift and decisive: across the border into Essetir and out again before Cenred’s forces had a chance to reach them. And if all went well, they’d be able to kill two birds with one stone: stop the raiding and slaving being carried out by Cenred’s proxy Jarl and send Cenred and clear and unmistakeable message—that perhaps he ought to think twice before starting a war with Camelot.

The mission required speed and stealth and would be an extremely dangerous one, so of course Arthur had ordered Merlin to stay safe home in the citadel. With barely more than a month to go before the birth, there was no way Merlin could keep up with them. Besides, someone had to oversee the city’s Yuletide preparations.

“Gwen has it all well in hand,” Merlin reminded him for at least the eighth time from atop the horse he rode at Arthur’s side.

The prince drew in a deep breath, counted to ten, and then exhaled before responding.

“And what about the rest of it? The stealth? The speed? The danger?”

“I’m keeping up just fine, or haven’t you noticed?” Merlin said with a pointed pucker of his lips. “And I’m very well aware of the danger. That’s why I’m here, you cabbagehead, to protect you.”

“I have an entire cohort of knights to protect me,” Arthur spat back, finding it impossible to argue with Merlin’s first point. They were already nearly a day’s ride out from Camelot, and the heavily pregnant Merlin had yet to show any signs of flagging. Arthur strongly suspected the use of magic.

“And what does any of them know to do against magic?” Merlin said, and Arthur let it lie there for now.

Merlin was disgustingly correct on all points. Once his manservant had finished his never-ending litany of “times I saved your life with magic while you were lying on the grass having a bit of a snooze,” it had become painfully clear to Arthur how woefully under-equipped Camelot’s forces really were to face off against sorcerers. Though he hadn’t dared voice the thought aloud, he found himself practically faint with terror knowing how many times Camelot’s entire fate had rested on Merlin’s thin shoulders.

And here Merlin was again at a time when he should be home resting and facing off against nothing more dangerous than a prickly holly leaf, riding out at Arthur’s side to stand as Camelot’s sole protection against malicious magic.

At least Arthur could console himself with the thought that Merlin was also right about Gwen having the Yuletide preparations firmly in hand.

He’d gone to see her two days before they’d mounted up and ridden out. It was the first time the two of them had spoken alone since that day she’d stopped him in the corridor.

It seemed an entire lifetime had passed in between those two conversations.

Gwen’s house had been just as small and warm as he’d remembered. He could still recall how fascinated he’d been by it the first time he’d set foot inside: the idea that anyone could live their whole life in such a circumscribed space.

“Arthur,” Gwen had said after opening the door to his knock. “I mean…Sire,” she’d added, her eyes falling after a moment. “Is there something I can assist you with?”

“I just want to talk,” Arthur had said, guilt stabbing at his heart. “I owe you an apology and a chance to…to air your grievances.”

She’d looked for a moment like she might turn him away, but instead she stepped back and ushered him inside.

“Have a seat,” she’d offered, gesturing toward the table. Arthur had sat, but Gwen had stood, close to the door with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Gwen,” he’d said, his voice sounding strained. This had been so much easier when he’d rehearsed it in front of his mirror. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she’d asked, unwilling to give an inch.

“For…not telling you. For not ending things with you before…starting things with someone else.”

She stared at him for a while, and he met her eye, bearing her scrutiny as a sort of punishment—a far lighter one than he probably deserved.

“I’m more angry with myself than with you, really,” she told him eventually. “For getting my hopes up and letting myself believe that you felt something real for me.”

“I did,” Arthur objected. “I loved you. I still do.”

“You just love Merlin more?” she said with a dangerous rise of her eyebrow. “No, don’t answer that. I’m not really jealous. You’ve always felt more for him than you’d let yourself admit. More fool me for never guessing those feelings might be romantic.”

Arthur couldn’t think of anything to reply that wasn’t an excuse, so he simply said again, “I’m sorry.”

She turned her head and waved a hand in the air, to dismiss his apology or accept it, he didn’t know.

“Just,” she said after a while in a hard voice, “just be good to him, Arthur—better than you’ve been to me.”

He nodded, not sure whether she saw the gesture.

“I will,” he swore, and the oath felt more solemn than any he’d ever sworn in his life.

There was a pause, and then she dipped her head in acknowledgement, of his oath he supposed or maybe of the entire mess of a situation.

He drew a deep breath to steady himself and then put on all the princely consequence he could muster.

“I also came to ask you a favor,” he continued.

She turned a strange look on him, and he’d almost been able to feel her scorn. He’d hurried on before she could refuse him point blank.

“As you know, my father’s castellan, Thomas, is old and nearing retirement. He’s asked me to look for his replacement, someone he can train to take over once he’s ready to step down. I can think of no one better or more capable than you, and since you now find yourself in need of a new position…”

Her eyes had narrowed as she studied him askance.

“Is this a bribe?” she asked.

“No,” he said at once, his lips tightening. “My father is unwell, and I must ride for the border with Essetir in two days’ time—that’s a secret by the way, and I know I can trust you to keep it. I need to know that I’m leaving the citadel in the hands of someone I can trust. Thomas is trustworthy, but he lacks the energy to contend with the more cantankerous lords of the council.”

Gwen’s eyes narrowed even further.

“And you’re leaving me in charge and not Merlin?”

Arthur had sighed and rubbed a hand over aching eyes.

“Officially, I am also entrusting you with Merlin’s safety and wellbeing while I am away,” he’d muttered. “Unofficially, I doubt that anything I say or do will keep him from following me all the way to Essetir.”

When he’d dropped his hand from his eyes and looked back up to see how she was taking it, he’d finally been able to let out a relieved breath at the sight of the small smile curving her lips.

“That does sound rather like our Merlin.”

**

The castle was old and sturdily-built, but Arthur could see even from this distance that it hadn’t been well-maintained for decades now. If memory served him, the lord of these parts had run afoul of Cenred’s father and lost his head for his misdeeds. From everything his spies told him, this Jarl had been here for a matter of months only, and clearly no one had ever taught him the importance of wall maintenance. Arthur spotted at least half a dozen places where the castle walls might be easily breached with the right application of force.

Not that they were going to bother with something so time-consuming as breaching the castle walls. The main gates were poorly guarded, and Arthur hadn’t spotted a single sentry up above. He estimated he and his men could take the castle in under half an hour, and probably far less.

He was on the verge of giving the signal when a hand on his arm stopped him.

He turned a vexed look on Merlin but lost some of his annoyance when he caught sight of Merlin’s pale face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, a flood of worst-case scenarios wiping away every other thought.

“The druids,” Merlin replied in a harsh whisper, “they’re warning me that Cenred and his forces are nearer than we think."

Arthur frowned, gazing at the trees around them and then at the empty field leading up to the castle, all covered in a light dusting of snow. 

“The druids?” he repeated because he saw no one but his own men.

“Up here,” Merlin said, tapping a finger against the side of his head. “Like with Mordred. I told you, remember?”

Arthur’s eyebrows rose, and he gave another sharp look around, but there was no one.

“All right,” Arthur muttered after a moment. “New plan.”

They took the castle in just over a quarter of an hour. Jarl and his men turned out to be hardly worth the fight. Arthur was merely thankful that he hadn’t lost any of his small force of men in the brief skirmish—also that Jarl at least hadn’t skimped on his weapon stores.

“Sire,” called Leon, returning to the dilapidated throne room from the sweep of the dungeons Arthur had assigned him. “Look.”

And when Arthur looked, he saw not only a great crowd of men emerging who looked like they’d been languishing in the dungeons for quite some time, but also the last person in the world he’d guessed he might meet here.

“Can’t say I expected to be rescued by you of all people, Princess,” Gwaine greeted him from the head of the crowd. “But I am very glad to see you.”

“Hm,” Arthur replied, “Oddly enough, I can say the same of you.” He could use another strong fighter right about now. He was glad, though, that Merlin had gone with the group inspecting the courtyard and wasn’t here just at the moment. That particular reunion would keep for later.

“Why, Princess,” Gwaine crowed, clutching a hand over his heart. “I’m touched.”

“Don’t be,” Arthur glared at him. “I’m about to put you to work.”

“Sire,” another breathless voice called to him, and he turned to find Carac rushing through another doorway. “We’ve spotted them. They’ll be on us in three quarters of an hour.”

“Right,” Arthur gave him a curt nod of acknowledgement. “Let’s get to it then.”

There was only so much that Arthur could do to secure an old, decrepit castle against the onslaught of an entire army, but damned if he wasn’t going to try. In the next twenty minutes, he’d stationed archers all along the upper battlements, closed the gates and lowered the portcullis, stationed men to guard the weakest points of the walls, and berated Merlin for neglecting to inform him of his harebrained scheme to fly off to a bloody _lake_ of all places on _dragon back_.

“While pregnant!” Arthur had added, but Merlin was already clambering up onto the dragon’s neck, and Arthur had no choice but to keep a healthy distance from those wicked-looking teeth.

“Yes,” the dragon said, bending its neck a bit to try to watch what Merlin was doing from the corner of one golden eye. “It seems the future dragon lord is turning out nicely.”

“It’s not a chicken roasting in the oven,” Merlin snorted, leaning forward and wrapping his arms around the dragon’s neck.

“Close enough,” the dragon said, and Arthur just shook his head, unwilling to accept that any of this was part of his reality.

“Just be careful,” Arthur yelled up to Merlin.

His lunatic of a manservant grinned down at him like he was having the best day of his life.

“Be back in two shakes,” he called. “You won’t even miss me.”

“I doubt that!” Arthur tried to yell but instead choked on the dirt and dust stirred by the beating of the dragon’s great wings as it took off into the air.

Arthur had to be content with the fact that before he’d left, Merlin had laid a spell over the castle that he said would keep even Morgause at bay for some time. Gazing around the courtyard now, Arthur couldn’t see that anything about the place looked different, but he supposed that must be because he didn’t have any magic.

“Was Merlin always that fat?” came Gwaine’s voice from behind him, and Arthur turned to find the other alpha staring up into the sky with a frown creasing his brow. “Also, since when does he ride dragons?”

Arthur clapped a hand on Gwaine’s shoulder and shook his head again.

“We’ll catch you up later,” he said and then motioned the other man back inside.

**

The scouting party wandered directly beneath them once more, and Arthur held his breath lest the harsh sound of it give away their position. Beside him, Gwaine caught his attention, gave a nod toward the group below, then made as if to notch an arrow in his bow.

Arthur was tempted to give him the go-ahead. The group below contained Morgause, and they were close enough that even a mediocre archer wasn’t likely to miss. He hoped, for the sake of the impending battle, that Gwaine was a more-than-mediocre archer.

Arthur shook his head, and Gwaine lowered his weapon again.

It would be wise to take Morgause out while they had the chance, but Cenred and Morgana had been spotted in the further distance, surrounded by a whole host of Cenred’s soldiers. Merlin had guessed that they’d discovered Arthur’s trespass into Essetir through scrying—either that, or through one of Morgana’s visions.

If they took out Morgause, they would still have Morgana and an unknown number of other sorcerers to contend with, and Arthur wasn’t sure exactly how the illusion Merlin had cast on the castle worked. He hadn’t had time to go over the details and simply told Arthur to hold off on engaging the enemy for as long as he could until Merlin and the dragon returned. For all Arthur knew, shooting an arrow through it would destroy the illusion entirely.

Down below, Morgause dismounted and approached the castle walls alone, gazing up at them with a look of consternation. From what Merlin had been able to call over his shoulder as he’d run to meet the dragon, his spell would have made the castle seem to disappear entirely from the space where it had once stood. Morgause and the soldiers who had ridden up beside her would think that they were gazing upon open field.

It was a rather flimsy defense, Merlin had admitted. After all, the castle had been within the enemy’s sight when Merlin’s spell must have made it suddenly wink out of existence. They knew very well that it was here, but without visual confirmation of its exact location and status, they would have no choice but to proceed with caution.

Or so they had supposed, but Morgause was being about as incautious as was possible under the circumstances. Arthur studied the alpha with narrowed eyes—cocky, that’s what she was. Too used to being the most powerful person in the room to remember that she wasn’t invulnerable. He made careful note of that observation for later.

“Arthur!”

The sound of his name yelled so loud and clear caused him to snap at once to attention.

“I know you’re there,” Morgause yelled. “No doubt you’ve acquired some pet sorcerer you’re convinced is somehow a match for me. My advice to them is to run and run now.”

Her voice was cold, steady, assured. He could still recall the first time he’d heard it, when she’d shown up in Camelot one day and challenged him to single combat…and beaten him. That fact still rankled.

“I can see right through this weak excuse for a spell,” Morgause was saying, and Arthur had to admire the boldness of her lie. “Dispel it and surrender, my brother or sister, and I can guarantee no harm will come to you.”

There was movement beside him, and Arthur found Gwaine eyeing him with an amused crook of an eyebrow. Arthur found himself returning the look. He could only imagine what Merlin would have to say to Morgause’s offer.

“I wonder what King Uther will think when he learns that his son has resorted to using magic,” Morgause continued. “Or perhaps he has already learned, and that’s why you are here, Arthur Pendragon. Were you banished by your own father? We could be allies, then, you know. I could help you take back your rightful throne.”

Arthur felt his lip twitch in a sneer. He wondered if this was the speech Morgana had heard, the one that had convinced her to turn against her own family.

“No?” Morgause was saying with a disappointed shake of her blonde head. “Very well then,” and she raised a hand, slitted her eyes, and muttered something.

Arthur’s hand reached for his sword as he saw the distant glow kindling in her eyes, but he waited, curious how Merlin’s magic would stand up. Morgause’s fingers curled into a claw, and her eyes squinted further. Her muttering grew a little louder, more insistent. Nothing seemed to be happening. Several paces behind her, the other four members of her party sat astride their horses looking alert but unconcerned. Morgause’s voice rose again, enough that Arthur could almost make out words—words in a strange, unfamiliar tongue, of course. She raised her other hand and thrust both arms out to their full extension.

Biting his lip, Arthur gestured to Gwaine and the other archers, and out of the corner of his eye, he caught the motion of the other alpha raising his bow and holding it at the ready.

He could see the moment when Morgause’s efforts finally succeeded in dispelling Merlin’s illusion. Every soldier in the line behind her flinched, each of them reaching for a weapon, and most of their horses stepped back or sidled in indication of their riders’ agitation. Morgause herself stumbled and bowed as her arms fell to her sides and her chin dropped to her chest. _Good_, Arthur thought. The more energy she’d had to expend destroying the illusion, the less she had to attack.

“Fire!” Arthur called in the next moment, and a rain of arrows flew past him from the line of archers spread out along the battlements to either side of him. Gwaine’s arrow flew straight and true—and struck against a shield that Morgause had somehow managed to raise just in time.

Behind her, though, all four of her companions slumped over their mounts’ backs, and two even slid to the ground, either dead or too injured to stay mounted.

Morgause’s hands were up again, and her teeth were gritted in a fierce expression. Her eyes had found Arthur now, and he felt almost pierced by her glare.

However, Gwaine hadn’t let her shield deter him and was busy emptying his quiver against it in vain. Arthur was about to reprimand him for the waste when he realized that Gwaine’s arrows were forcing Morgause to expend more of her energy on defense—and distracting her from forming an attack.

“Keep it up,” Arthur said, and though Gwaine didn’t acknowledge the order, he kept up his barrage. “The rest of you hold your fire unless someone else comes in range.”

There wasn’t much else they could do now, except wait for Cenred and his army to approach. Arthur could already see signs of movement among the front lines arrayed in the near distance.

A silence fell, and he realized Gwaine had stopped firing. He returned his attention to Morgause and felt a wave of relief wash through him. She had chosen to retreat for now, hurrying back to snag the reins of one of the wandering horses, swinging into the saddle and then racing off to meet the advancing army.

Arthur took a moment to close his eyes and whisper a prayer that Merlin, wherever he’d gone, would stay safe. It was some comfort to think that if they didn’t manage to hold out, at least Merlin would be far, far away from the slaughter.

“What’s the plan, Princess?” Gwaine asked as they watched Morgause growing smaller out on the plain.

“Hold the castle for as long as we can,” Arthur said with a shrug. He didn’t want to try to guess how long that might actually be.

**

It took three good strikes from one of Morgause’s spells to breach the old castle’s walls. The moment her first spell struck home, Arthur knew it was all over. He gestured one of the archers to take charge on the battlements and rushed down the crumbling stairs to the courtyard, pulling his sword as he went. He wanted to get in a few strikes of his own before the inevitable end.

He found Leon at the head of the men who had gathered there to guard the breach. For the moment, while the dust and rubble settled into an unstable pile, the enemy held back. Arthur met Leon’s eye, and the knight gave him a single, solemn nod. Arthur returned it. There were far worse people to have at one’s side at a time like this. Wherever they were out there, Arthur was very grateful to the druids for giving him Leon back.

They turned to face the dusty crevice in the wall, raising their swords as the first shadowy form appeared amidst the ruined stones.

All at once, there was wind and a great, flapping noise, and dust flying into Arthur’s eyes and nose. For a moment, he thought it was another of Morgause’s attacks. Then he heard a shout in a very familiar voice. 

“Arthur!”

He threw an arm across his eyes, squinted through the dusty air, and found that he was staring up at the massive, scaly underside of a dragon.

“Don’t squash them!” he heard Merlin yelling from somewhere higher up. The dragon seemed to heed Merlin’s advice and continued on further into the courtyard before coming in for a (surprisingly soft) landing.

Arthur didn’t have time to pay much more attention to whatever Merlin and his dragon were doing, for the figure in the breach had not slowed their advance, and already he could make out more silhouettes hot on their heels.

The dust raised by the dragon’s wings settled, and Arthur found himself staring down Morgause once more.

Her eyes were glowing again, and she held one hand stretched out in front of her. She was too far away for Arthur to make out her low chanting, but he didn’t need to hear it to know she was preparing an attack.

“Arthur!” came Merlin’s breathless voice from behind him again. “Here!”

He refused to take his eyes from the enemy, even for Merlin—especially with Merlin there, really. Honestly, his ridiculous manservant had no sense of self-preservation.

Some distant part of his mind registered Merlin’s sounds of annoyance from behind him, but most of him was focused on Morgause. She spread her fingers, and her eyes flashed, and a bright light flared out from her hand.

“_Scield!_” came Merlin’s voice, and he just caught Merlin’s hand appearing from over his shoulder. The light Morgause had created splashed against a glowing golden barrier, spilling uselessly upon the ground.

The surprise in the sorceress’s face hardly surpassed his own.

“Here!” Merlin yelled again, and Arthur turned at last to find that Merlin was half-doubled over beside him, panting and holding something out toward him. 

It was a sword. 

He was about to point out that he already _had_ one of those, _Mer_lin, when he took a closer look and then dropped his own blade to reach for the one in Merlin’s hand. It was the most beautiful blade he’d ever seen, gleaming steel-bright with a strip of inscribed gold inlaid just below the crosspiece. The moment his hand touched it, he felt a new strength singing through him, something bold and ancient and fearless bolstering his own courage.

“It’s yours,” Merlin gasped out, gazing up at him from under a sweat-soaked brow. “Take it and defeat her.”

Arthur wanted to pay more attention to how pale Merlin was and how he was clutching at his middle, but every instinct told him that he must turn _now_ and face his enemy.

He turned not a moment too soon. Already Morgause was raising her hand again, another spell gathering on her lips. Arthur let out his fiercest war cry and charged. All around him, his men surged forward, matching his cry with cries of their own, weapons and shields raised to meet Cenred’s men who came pouring through the breach behind the sorceress.

It wasn’t until he was almost upon her that Arthur saw Morgause’s eyes, wide, wild, glowing a fearsome orange—and not looking at him at all. Instead, they were focused beyond him, and her raised hand was aimed not at the man bearing down upon her with a sword but at _Merlin_.

_Cocky_, he thought, and fatally so. He didn’t know whether Merlin was in any state to defend himself right now, but it didn’t matter. Arthur was there to defend him.

Morgause’s eyes barely flicked toward him as lunged, and she seemed to dismiss him in that single glance, but Arthur held his course, and as he slid the sword home, he felt it slice through something that wasn’t cloth or flesh, something thick and hard that flashed bright in his eyes and sent a numbing tingle up his arm. He had just a moment to see Morgause’s expression shift to one of surprise as he felt the sword strike true, into her middle, straight up through her heart. She made a weird gasping, gurgling sound before her arm fell limp at her side and she crumpled to the ground at his feet.

A scream rent the air, but Arthur took a moment to pull his sword from Morgause’s still chest and clean it on her cape before raising his head to find the source of the noise.

When he did, his heart stopped for a moment.

There, surrounded by Cenred’s soldiers and knights of Camelot locked in heated battle (and were some of the enemy soldiers on _fire_?) stood Morgana, face drained of color and mouth hanging open in a sustained scream.

She was staring straight at Arthur, or maybe she was staring at the broken, bloody body lying at Arthur’s feet.

He started toward her, not knowing whether it would be to soothe her or to engage her in battle, but the moment he moved, her eyes opened wide--with fear he thought--and she turned and fled back through the breach, back the way she had come.

Arthur made as if to follow, but she wasn’t the only one retreating. Others from Cenred’s army had seen Morgause fall, had probably heard Morgana scream and seen her retreat as well (and yes, some of them were in fact on fire), and the enemy line was breaking. Arthur pushed forward, hacking and slashing his way across the battlefield, trying to reach his sister.

His men were closing ranks around him, pursuing the fleeing enemy, chasing them back through the breach in the crumbling walls. A great WOOSH! and downdraft of heat and wind almost knocked him from his feet, and he glanced up to see the dragon taking off overhead, Merlin clinging to its neck instead of staying safe behind Arthur where he was _supposed_ to be.

With a vexed yell, Arthur put his head down, gritted his teeth, and pushed forward. All around him, his men echoed his yell. And then they were over the rubble and through the jagged crack in the wall, and there! He could just make out Morgana in the distance, running flat-out toward someone on horseback. But the dragon was far, far faster than she was, and he and Merlin reached Morgana’s target long before she did.

The enemy soldiers were in full retreat, many fleeing, not even bothering to cover their rear, and Arthur wanted to call his men back, tell them to keep to the safety of the castle walls, but that was Morgana and Merlin out there. He couldn’t just leave them alone and exposed.

The dragon had swooped down upon the mounted figure, knocking him from his horse to the ground, and now the great winged beast was alighting a few yards away, and Merlin was slithering to the ground, still clutching his rounded middle, but with an arm outstretched toward the fallen figure.

Arthur saw Morgana pull up short, mere feet away from the riderless horse. She stood so still, watching, he guessed, as Merlin flung a spell at the man on the ground--Cenred, Arthur realized--and the fallen king fell still and silent. Merlin didn’t drop his hand, though. Instead he raised it and his eyes toward Morgana.

A cry of terror rose up into Arthur’s throat, and he ordered his legs to carry him forward faster--but there was no way he’d get there in time.

Morgana moved at last, dashing toward the confused horse, grabbing its reins and swinging up onto its back in a single, practiced move, and then she was digging in her heels and yelling--too far away for Arthur to hear what she said--and the horse reared, almost throwing her, but she clung on, and when the frightened creature’s hooves bit back into the ground, she was off, disappearing at speed with Cenred’s men following close behind.

For a moment, Arthur feared that Merlin would mount the dragon again and pursue. But instead, as Arthur made a mad dash and stumble toward him, he saw Merlin’s knees buckle, and then the omega tipped forward, catching himself with one hand in the dirt, and fell onto his side next to King Cenred’s prone form.

It was so, so long before Arthur could reach him. He watched the dragon dip his long neck down toward Merlin and curve his wings above him in a gesture that made Arthur think of a mother hen sheltering her chick.

“Merlin,” Arthur heard himself calling out. “Merlin, Merlin, please.”

Then finally he was dropping to his knees beside Merlin’s trembling body, in the shadow of the dragon’s hulking form, his sword slipping from his fingers.

“Merlin,” he sobbed, “Speak to me, please.”

Merlin’s arms were wrapped around his middle, and his clothes were soaked in sweat and melted snow. His eyes were squeezed shut tight, and at the sound of Arthur’s words, he merely let out a faint groan.

“He is going to give birth,” came the dragon’s rumbling voice from above him. “Messy affair, human birth,” he added, but his grave tone didn’t match the flippancy of his words.

“But it’s not time yet,” Arthur said. He reached down and gathered Merlin into his arms, cursing his armor for preventing him from holding the omega’s chilled body against the heat of his chest. “The birth isn’t supposed to be for another month at least.”

“Tell that to the baby,” the dragon huffed. A great cloud of sulfurous smoke enveloped them.

“Arthur!” came Leon’s voice from nearby, and Arthur twisted around to find Leon bearing down upon them, with several others on his heels. Some distant part of Arthur’s mind was pleased to note that the bulk of his own forces seemed to have withdrawn into the castle, probably to hold it against further attack. “Is that King Cenred?” Leon asked as he dropped down beside Arthur.

In that moment, Arthur neither knew nor cared who the other body beside Merlin was, so he ignored Leon’s question in lieu of addressing one of his own to the dragon.

“How quickly can you get him back to Camelot?” 

The beast lowered its head further until its eyes were nearly on a level with Arthur’s, and Arthur felt himself being weighed.

“In a matter of hours, Your Majesty,” the beast replied, still regarding him with slitted eyes. “But he is too weak to hold onto my back.”

“Great gods!” came another voice from behind him, one that Arthur registered with a distant annoyance. “Is Merlin _pregnant_?”

“I’m no majesty,” Arthur told the dragon. “I’m still only a prince.”

The dragon let out another of its sulfurous snorts, leaving Arthur and the others gathered there coughing. He held Merlin’s face closer to his chest, hoping to spare him the suffocating smoke, and Merlin let out another faint moan.

“You’re the only King of Camelot that I acknowledge,” the dragon retorted. “Now what are you going to do about Merlin.”

“Sire,” Leon’s voice said. “I’ll climb up behind him and hold him steady.”

“No, you won’t!” objected that second, annoying voice. Oh, it was _Gwaine_. “If anyone’s taking Merlin, it’s me.”

“I think you’ve done enough already,” Arthur bit out over his shoulder.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gwaine retorted, his sweat and blood-stained brow wrinkling up.

“It means congratulations, we’re about to be fathers,” Arthur muttered, climbing to his feet and hefting Merlin with him. “And neither of you is going back to Camelot with Merlin. I need you to secure Cenred and see to it that he makes it safely back to the citadel for the peace conference.”

“What?” spluttered Gwaine. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

But Arthur was already lifting Merlin up onto the dragon’s neck and clambering up behind him.

“We’ll take care of Cenred, Sire,” Leon called, handing Arthur's sword up to him. Arthur sheathed it, wrapped his arms around Merlin’s back, and leaned forward to grip onto the dragon’s neck too. 

“Thank you, Leon,” Arthur yelled down to him as the dragon beat its great wings and began to rise into the air. “I always knew I could count on you.”

“Don’t just fly away!” he heard Gwaine shout from far below. “What do you mean ‘we’?!”

**

At some point during that long, fearful flight, it occurred to Arthur that leaving his men on their own to secure a captured royal prisoner against a potential rescue mission from an entire army had, perhaps, not been the most strategically sound decision he’d ever made.

As Merlin shook and moaned and shivered against him, Arthur couldn’t feel any regret about it. There were only two things he really regretted.

The first was that he’d let Merlin come along with him at all.

“You should’ve just stayed in Camelot,” Arthur muttered against the damp hair at the back of Merlin’s neck.

“If I had, you’d be dead by now,” Merlin muttered back, apparently in one of his more lucid moments between bouts of pain. And Arthur couldn’t argue with that, but he regretted it all the same.

The second thing he regretted was that he couldn’t stay in Camelot at Merlin’s side once they arrived. His men needed him. He couldn’t just abandon them mid-mission, no matter how badly he wished he could stay with Merlin.

The denizens of the citadel were understandably shocked and awed at the sight of a dragon descending upon the castle courtyard, and the three of them landed in the midst of a general panic.

“Stand down!” Arthur yelled at the brave guards trying to charge the dragon. “It’s me!”

“Sire!” one of them exclaimed--Beren, Arthur saw when he’d taken a moment to look.

“Help me,” Arthur ordered, and two of the guards rushed forward to help him lower Merlin gently from the dragon’s back. “You there! Beren! Run and fetch Gaius to my chambers at once.”

Merlin’s eyes were closed again, and he was far, far too pale for Arthur’s liking. With a grimace, he turned back to face the dragon, who was gazing down at Merlin with an unreadable expression on his great face.

“Will you take me back to my men, once I get Merlin safely inside?” Arthur asked. “Please,” he added, not caring how much like pleading it sounded.

The dragon eyed him for a moment but then dipped its head in a sort of bow.

“I will,” it said. “But don’t get any ideas about using me as a regular source of transportation. This is a one-time offer.”

“Understood,” Arthur said, returning the dragon’s stiff nod. “Let’s get him inside,” Arthur ordered the two guards assisting him, and they carried the groaning Merlin as swiftly and gingerly up the castle steps as they could.

Gaius arrived at the doors to Arthur’s chambers nearly at the same time that they did. Gwen was right behind him.

“Get him into the bed at once,” the physician ordered. “What happened?” This last was directed at Arthur.

“I think he’s gone into early labor,” Arthur said. “But he hasn’t been lucid enough to tell me much.”

“I see,” Gaius said, and his expression made Arthur’s heart clench in fear.

“Please,” Arthur said. He seemed to be using that word a lot today. “Please, do all you can for him and for the child.”

Gaius gave him a soft look, warmer and more fatherly than any look Arthur had ever received from his true father.

“You have my word, Sire,” he said.

“I must go,” Arthur told him, gazing down at Merlin where he lay shivering upon the covers. With a deep sigh, he bent and pressed a kiss to Merlin’s forehead. “Gaius and Gwen will take good care of you,” he murmured. “Just hold on.”

Merlin didn’t say anything, and Arthur couldn’t wait to see if he would.

On the way out the door, Gwen stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“He’ll be fine, Arthur,” she said, gazing up at him with so much tender concern in her eyes that it shamed him. “I know he will.”

“Of course he will,” Arthur agreed and gave her the best smile he could manage.

Outside, the dragon sat in the middle of the courtyard, fastidiously cleaning one claw with its tongue while a whole host of guards and other inhabitants of the castle stood at a safe distance and gawked.

“Ready, Young Pendragon,” the dragon hummed when he approached, setting its claws back down upon the stones with an almost prim air.

“What happened to ‘Your Majesty?’” Arthur muttered, heaving himself back up onto the dragon’s back. He did his best not to think about how, once they were in the air, he would be entirely at the creature’s mercy. 

“It seemed like bad form, considering where we are,” the dragon replied and then launched itself into the air.

**

When they found the group of knights (and Gwaine and the other freed prisoners, and Cenred too) at last, still within the borders of Essetir, the dragon circled once overhead to allow Arthur a view of the land for miles around. He was relieved to find no sign of the scattered army anywhere.

“This is incredible,” Arthur marveled as he gazed down at the land with its tiny trees and hillocks and roads. “It’s like looking at a living map. I wish I had this kind of advantage in every battle.”

“Yes,” the dragon grunted. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your father had kept faith with his dragon allies instead of slaughtering us?”

“Oh,” Arthur said.

“Merlin will be fine,” the dragon told him as they landed in a clearing not far from where he’d spotted his knights’ red cloaks amongst the forest’s greens and browns.

“And the child?” Arthur asked, sliding to the ground less gracefully than he would have liked. His legs were stiff and sore from so many hours clinging to the dragon’s back in the freezing upper air.

“Who can say?” the dragon rumbled and took off at once into the skies again.

Arthur wove his way through the trees quickly, stamping his feet and swinging his arms to try to bring feeling back to numb limbs. He spotted his men before they saw him, though he could see they were on alert for his approach. They weren’t likely to have missed the dragon wheeling overhead.

“Leon!” he hailed the knight as he stepped onto the road where the group had paused to await him.

“Sire,” Leon replied. He sat astride his own horse and was leading Arthur’s, which had been tasked with bearing the limp form of a bound and gagged Cenred. Arthur noted the king’s angry glare and offered him a nod of acknowledgement. “We weren’t expecting you back.”

“I saw Merlin safe into Gaius’s care and returned to personally ensure King Cenred’s speedy passage to Camelot,” Arthur told him, though he kept hold of Cenred’s gaze while he did so. The other man’s eyes flared in fury, and he made some sort of reply that the gag happily muffled.

Leon didn’t have a chance to respond, for just then Gwaine pounded up on his own mount, pulled up hard in front of Arthur, and leaned across the horse’s withers to demand,

“Is Merlin pregnant with MY CHILD?” 

He looked rather upset. Arthur couldn’t entirely blame him.

“As far as I and everyone else here is concerned,” Arthur told him with a raised brow, “Merlin is pregnant with a future prince or princess of Camelot.”

Gwaine cast a wary glance around, dismounted, and strode stiff-legged up to Arthur.

“Tell me the truth,” he muttered under his breath, leaning in close enough for Arthur to smell the smoke and sweat upon him. “Is it mine?”

“That’s what Merlin tells me,” Arthur said.

Gwaine made an indescribable face, raised a hand to run his fingers through his hair, gazed around them with eyes unseeing, looked back at Arthur again.

“Why didn’t he tell _me_?”

Arthur wanted to sigh. How had he ended up being the one stuck with this duty? He’d been all in favor of telling Gwaine when they’d first had the chance.

“Merlin’s not very good at telling people the truth,” Arthur said with an uncomfortable shrug. “He thought you’d be happier not knowing you had a child you’d never get to meet.”

Gwaine puffed up his cheeks, looked like he wanted to argue, and then all the wind blew out of his sails, and he sagged forward.

“Maybe he was right,” he sighed. “I guess...Just. Will you send word to me? To let me know that Merlin and the child are safe? I’ll cross the border into Caerleon. Wait. Maybe Nemeth, and I’ll wait--”

Arthur’s patience reached its end.

“Get back on your horse. It’s a long way to Camelot,” he barked and headed for Merlin’s mount, whose reins had been tied to Carac’s saddle.

“But--” he heard Gwaine squawking behind him.

“I’ll announce your official pardon when we get the city. Mount up!” and he didn’t wait to see whether Gwaine followed his order the second time.

**

It was a grueling march, making it back across the border before nightfall, but once there, Arthur pushed his men even further. There was a ruined castle not far from the border, and while it wouldn’t provide much protection if someone from Essetir decided to bring an army over to rescue their king, it was better than spending the night out in the open.

However, when they reached the ruins, they found them already occupied. In the great hall, a fire flickered, and when Arthur and Leon spied through a window to see who was inside, they discovered none other than Lancelot and Elyan.

“Your Highness,” Elyan exclaimed when Arthur pushed through the great hall’s old wooden doors, his ragged group of exhausted men following behind. “We’d almost begun to think we’d passed you in the dark.”

“You were looking for us?” Arthur asked, walking up to warm his hands gratefully at their fire. 

“Gwen sent us,” Lancelot answered. “Percival and I—” and here he paused to gesture toward a man Arthur hadn’t noticed because he was leaning against the same wall the window was in “arrived in Camelot just after you departed. We’d heard that, ah, there were changes underway, and we came to see for ourselves.”

Percival nodded his head in a single, slow flex of his thick neck, and Arthur found himself staring at the clear ripple of muscle.

“Gwen thought you might require further aid,” Elyan put in then. “A larger force follows a few hours behind us.”

Arthur allowed himself a small, self-congratulatory smile. He’d known Gwen would be the right choice for her new position.

“I’m glad to have you,” Arthur told them, clapping Elyan on the shoulder. “My men and I are exhausted, and someone’s got to guard the prisoner.”

All three pairs of eyes turned to follow his nod. A few paces behind him, a bedraggled-looking Cenred was being propped up between Leon and Carac. 

“Who’s he?” Lancelot asked, and Arthur turned back to offer the other alpha a tired but pleased smile.

“The king of Essetir,” he said, and Lancelot’s eyebrows rose in what Arthur took to be a sign that he was impressed. “What news of Merlin and the baby?”

The others exchanged a glance that had Arthur’s heart racing, but it was Elyan who told him, “He was still at work when we left. We know hardly more than you do.”

Arthur did his best to be content with that.

There was a massive old table in one corner of the room, and once the men had settled in, it seemed only natural for Arthur to make use of it. He called for Elyan, Lancelot, Leon, Percival, and (he sighed) Gwaine to join him there, and they held a quick council. And somewhere between introducing everyone to everyone else and catching them all up on recent events, Arthur found himself making some rather high and mighty speeches, and before he knew it, he’d knighted a bunch of people and declared the First Law of Camelot null and void.

All in all, as he lay down to sleep that night, he felt it had been a productive evening.

**

They met up with the additional forces shortly after sunrise the next morning, and Arthur sent them under Elyan and Leon’s command to keep watch at the border against a possible invasion from Essetir.

The rest of the ride to the citadel was too long and too quiet. Arthur found himself fidgeting in his saddle like he hadn’t done since he was a child. Every moment he didn’t know what was happening to Merlin was a wasted one, as far as he was concerned.

He glanced at Gwaine a few times over the course of the trip and thought the other alpha’s expression likely mirrored his own. Gwaine hadn’t said a word since the previous afternoon.

Finally, finally, the city came into sight at the top of a rise in the road. Every one of them picked up their pace, finding a new wind now that home was so near.

The guards at the gate hailed them with great smiles on their faces, shouting up congratulations that Arthur didn’t pause to hear. Instead, he rushed his tired mount forward, going as fast as he dared through the crowded streets of the lower town. The others weren’t far behind him. Once he’d gained the castle courtyard, he was off his horse in no time, tossing the reins to someone without looking and all but running up the stairs.

Gwen met him at the top.

“Oh, thank the gods you made it safe,” she cried, reaching out and pulling him into a hug that left him bereft of words for a moment. “Merlin and the baby are still weak, but Gaius thinks they’re out of the worst danger,” she murmured as she held him close.

Arthur breathed out a sigh that was half a sob, and she let him go so he could hurry on his way. Other people called out to him, more congratulations or exclamations of relief at his return, but he hardly paid them any mind.

When he pushed open the door to his chambers, he found Gaius and—to his surprise—Merlin’s mother inside, both stood beside the bed.

“How is he?” Arthur said the moment he crossed the threshold. They both turned at the sound of his voice, Gaius accompanying the movement with a finger raised to his lips.

“Sleeping, Sire,” the physician whispered when Arthur had drawn closer. “He’s exhausted but otherwise fine.”

Arthur nodded, and Gaius and Hunith both stepped out of the way, finally allowing Arthur an unobstructed view of Merlin’s form lying still on the bed. A moment later, Arthur saw the rise and fall of his chest, and relief washed through him, strong and dizzying. Merlin’s face was turned away, so that all Arthur could see of it was the sharp line of one cheek. His skin looked too pale, but otherwise there was no sign that anything might be wrong.

“Would you like to meet your daughter?” came a soft voice from behind him.

“Daughter?” he asked, spinning around to discover that Hunith held a tiny, swaddled bundle in her arms.

“Yes,” Hunith said, smiling down at the small, pink face that peeped out from between the folds of the swaddling clothes. “An omega daughter.”

Then she held the bundle out to him, and, heart thundering inside his chest, he took it, held it close, and stared. 

_The most precious gift I’ve ever been given_, his father had said, and Arthur thought they might have been the truest words the king had ever spoken. She had a few strands of dark hair (from one of her other fathers) sticking out from beneath her blanket, and if Arthur wasn’t mistaken, she’d inherited Merlin’s nose.

“Can I see?” he heard someone say and looked up, blinking, to find that Gwaine had, at some point, joined them. 

Hunith looked like she was about to ask Gwaine what in the world he was doing there, so Arthur held their daughter out toward him and said, “Here.”

Gwaine’s face flashed momentary terror, but then he swallowed and steeled himself and took the tiny bundle into his arms with slow, careful movements. Arthur squashed the flare of jealousy that burned inside his chest at the sight of the baby cradled in Gwaine’s arms. He told himself he needed to get used to the idea that she was also Gwaine's.

“I never thought about being a father,” Gwaine whispered in an awed tone as he stared down at the sleeping baby. “I don’t think I know how. I barely even knew my own.”

“You won’t have to do it alone,” Arthur said. “She’s mine and Merlin’s too, you know.”

Gwaine looked up at him then.

“You really plan to claim her?” he asked, brow furrowed. “Even though you know she’s mine?”

Arthur answered with a curt nod.

“Unless,” Arthur said, the words bitter but necessary, “unless you would rather claim her as yours and give her your name. I think I could talk Merlin round to the idea, as long as you swore never to take her from him.”

The other alpha stared at him a moment longer and then dropped his gaze to the baby’s face again.

“I have nothing to offer her,” he said. “I gave up even my family’s name a long time ago. And I think…I don’t think I’m really the father she needs, or at least not me alone. As long as I can still see her and watch her grow… I could be like a sort of uncle. I think I’d like that.”

Arthur nodded, relieved.

“We’ll discuss it further with Merlin once he’s well enough,” he said. “There’s no need to make any final decisions today.”

Hunith took her from them then and carried her off to a small side room that had once been a servant’s chamber but which they’d turned into a makeshift nursery. Arthur didn’t really know what any of them did after that because he drew a chair up to the side of the bed and settled in to keep vigil over Merlin until he woke.

**

When he did wake hours later, he cracked an eye at Arthur, sniffed, and said, “You really need a bath.”

“I’d have had one by now if my lazy manservant hadn’t spent all day in bed,” Arthur replied.

Merlin huffed a weak laugh.

“I’ll have you know I labored for nine hours.”

Arthur paled.

“Oh gods,” he said faintly. “I’m sorry.”

Merlin just smiled and closed his eyes again.

“Thank you,” he whispered, “Maybe just strike giving birth my from list of duties from now own. Don’t think I’m cut out for that line of work.”

“Of course,” Arthur murmured, reaching out and stroking a hand over his brow. “I’ll just add some extra mucking out of the stables to make up for it.”

He saw Merlin’s lips twitch, but a moment later, the omega was asleep again.

**

Her name was Anna, and she’d been born on Midwinter Eve.

That year’s Yuletide celebrations were extended in celebration of the royal birth, and it seemed that all of Camelot rejoiced together with Arthur and Merlin despite the threat of war with Essetir that still hung over all their heads.

The Prince Regent took advantage of the festive mood that lingered during the week following the celebrations to announce a variety of important changes to the laws of Camelot.

First, there was the repeal of the First Law restricting knighthood to nobles only. In conjunction with this announcement, he held a ceremony to more formally knight the first few commoners to receive that title: Lancelot, Gwaine, Elyan, and Percival. He also took the occasion to formally invest Gwen in her new position as Thomas’s successor.

The next announcement was the repeal of the ban on magic, which drew far more reaction from Camelot’s citizens. Some approved. Many reacted with fear and trepidation, but Arthur made sure to enact new laws restricting the practice of dark magic and reinforcing the understanding that crimes committed by magic were still crimes. They had to have another ceremony then to invest Merlin as Camelot’s first official Court Sorcerer in more than twenty years.

He allowed a few weeks for that particular change to settle before he made his next big announcement: a peace conference calling together rulers from several local kingdoms—including Camelot’s very special guest, King Cenred—to discuss the possibility of new terms of peace among them.

“You drove away too many potential allies with your harsh stance against magic,” he told his father the evening after he’d made the decree. “It’s busy work, you know, righting all your past wrongs.”

The king, as usual, sat quiet in his bed. Every day, his cheeks looked more sunken, his eyes more hollow. Privately, Gaius had told the prince that he didn’t think the king was much longer for this world.

“I look at Anna, and I think about the Camelot I want her to grow up in,” Arthur told the silent king. “Morgana and I, all we’ve known our whole lives is endless war and strife. I want Anna to know a peaceful world, one where she feels safe and free to pursue her own happiness.”

Uther said nothing, and Arthur told himself that was all right. Somewhere in there, he hoped the king heard him. Somewhere in there, he hoped he knew that he had a granddaughter who was going to grow up in a better world.

Later, when he slid between the sheets beside Merlin, his (former) manservant turned onto his side and wrapped his arms around him.

“Anna used magic today,” he whispered in a breathless voice once Arthur had deemed him thoroughly kissed. “Her eyes lit up for the briefest moment, and then this little breeze blew through the room and ruffled my hair."

“Great gods,” Arthur said, horrified. “If she can do that at barely a month old, what else have we got to look forward to.”

He heard Merlin give a tired chuckle.

“From what my mother tells me?” he said. “You probably don’t want to know.”

Arthur agreed, so instead of discussing it any further, he set himself about the task of kissing Merlin again. It didn’t take long for his body to long for more, but he ignored it. Merlin wasn’t fully recovered yet, no matter what he himself tried to claim. Arthur had had to order him to be patient. They’d fit it back into their daily schedule soon enough, and Arthur had no intentions of changing that part of his agenda for the foreseeable future.

“Do you want to get married?” Arthur heard himself ask when they pulled apart again.

In the faint firelight, he could just make out Merlin’s raised eyebrow. After a moment, he shook his head.

“Why would we do that?” he asked. “In a few months’ time, you’ve got to convince a bunch of ornery old kings and queens to make peace with Camelot. Isn’t dangling yourself as a possible marriage partner for their children the generally accepted method for achieving that? You can’t do that if they know you already plan to marry me.”

Arthur pondered that for a moment.

“We could get married in secret.”

“Mmm,” Merlin hummed then let out a yawn. “I think I’m done with big, world-shattering secrets for now, thank you very much. Now go back to your own side of the bed and let me get some sleep.”

**

A couple of weeks later, Arthur was returning from a council meeting that had run very late into the night. 

New people had begun arriving in Camelot—_magical_ people. First had come the druids, announcing that they came to seek an audience with Emrys. Everyone had been puzzled until Merlin had cleared his throat, stepped forward, and announced somewhat sheepishly that they meant him.

“I thought you weren’t keeping anymore secrets from me!” Arthur had grumbled.

“I just kind of forgot to mention that one,” Merlin had tried to claim, but his inability to meet Arthur’s eye said otherwise.

They’d asked to establish a center of magical learning in Camelot, as a way to mend fences and soothe the local population’s fears about the dangers of magic use. After discussing the matter with Merlin and the council, Arthur had agreed.

After them had come others: the Catha, led by a tall, intimidating alpha named Alator. They’d claimed their purpose was to offer Arthur and Emrys (“His name is _Mer_lin,” Arthur had muttered, but no one other than Merlin himself had heard) their magical protection. He’d granted their request as well.

Then, there had been Mordred, nearly full-grown now and eager to offer his sword arm and, uh, magic hand to the protection of Camelot. He’d just begun his training, but Arthur didn’t think it would be long before he joined the ranks of Camelot’s knights as their first magical member.

Today, a different sort had come: refugees—those who claimed they were being persecuted elsewhere in the realm for their possession of magic.

Arthur and his council had argued over how to address this problem for a long time, receiving a great deal of wise counsel from the druid Iseldir and Alator both. Merlin had participated for a time but had been forced to retire early. He was nearly back to his old strength but still tired more easily than normal.

The midnight bells had chimed long ago, and they’d finally chosen to conclude their discussions for the day, though few firm actions had been decided.

Arthur was about to push open the door to his chambers when he instead detoured toward the door across the hall. That was where they’d moved Anna along with her wet nurse once Merlin had taken up his new official duties. The Court Sorcerer needed a full night’s rest so he could work on untangling the complex needs of Camelot’s magical community during the daytime.

Arthur hadn’t seen Anna since around lunch, and he found that he almost physically ached to hold her. He didn’t want to wake her—the wet nurse deserved his sleep too—but he thought if he could at least see her, that would ease the ache some.

He found her at rest in her cradle next to the nurse’s bed, swaddled tight to keep her safe and warm. The room had a blazing fire going, plenty of light by which to admire her round, rosy cheeks. She’d been so small and skinny during those first couple of weeks, but it seemed that now each day she grew fatter and brighter eyed.

He couldn’t help reaching a finger down to stroke the soft downiness of one cheek. Most days he still couldn’t quite believe that someone so beautiful and so perfect could ever be real.

A quiet footfall behind him made him turn to see who had entered his daughter’s room. What he found was Morgana stepping from a shadowed corner, her eyes flickering in the bright firelight.

He whirled to face her, placing his body between her and the tiny one in the cradle.

“Morgana!” he hissed. “How did you—?”

“Why, with magic, dear Brother,” she replied, voice low and cool. “What else?”

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, heart in his throat. He had no magic to defend Anna with. If Morgana attacked, there was precious little he could do. Still, his hand went to the sword he still wore at his hip, the one that Merlin told him had been burnished in the great dragon’s breath.

“Could you really do it, I wonder?” Morgana asked, taking another step forward. “Strike down your own flesh and blood?”

Arthur clutched the pommel of his sword tighter.

“I think we’re both happier never learning the answer to that question,” he gritted out.

He heard stirring behind him and guessed that Anna’s nurse had been wakened by the all the noise, but he didn’t dare take his attention from Morgana to check.

“You owe me,” Morgana said then, her own jaw clenched tight. He saw the tension in her body now, the angry clench of one fist at her side. “You took my sister from me.”

It took a moment for him to understand what she was was saying. Her sister: Morgause, she must mean.

“She did the same to me,” he said.

One side of her lips lifted in a sneer.

“You owe me, Arthur,” she said again. “You always sided with _him_.”

“Not once I knew the truth,” he said. “You must have heard by now, all about Camelot’s new laws.”

“Too little, too late,” Morgana growled. “What good do new laws do me now? Camelot can never be my home again, not now, not after…everything."

Arthur wanted to tell her that wasn’t true, that she could still come home, that wherever he lived, she would always have a home there too. But something in her words and the set of her jaw told him that wouldn’t be enough. What he could offer her would never be enough to make up for all she felt she’d lost.

“Why are you here then?” he asked again, that ragged hole she and his father and his mother had left in his chest aching anew.

“For recompense,” she said, and then she took another step forward that had him half pulling his sword from its sheath. He saw her eyes drop—not to the sword, but lower—to Anna sleeping in her cradle. “Give her to me, Arthur. She has magic. Did you know that? I’ve seen it in my dreams, the wonderful things she will do. I can raise her in the old ways. I can teach her how to use her gifts rather than fear them. Give her to me to replace the one you took. You’ll have others—alphas, to carry on the Pendragon name. She’s only a little omega girl. Here in the castle she’ll grow up like me, stifled, taught to feel useless. Let me show her she can be so much more.”

Before she’d even half finished her speech, Arthur had his sword out. He knew Morgana. He knew that her calm request was nothing of the sort. If she was asking for Anna it was because she meant to take her, whether Arthur allowed it or no. He wondered, if he called out for the guards, if they could get there quick enough to make any difference, to keep Morgana from taking his daughter away.

He heard rustling behind him again and felt a presence at his back—the nurse. Perhaps he’d heard the veiled threat in Morgana’s voice too and come to help Arthur protect Anna. Arthur sent a silent thanks to him, knowing he was even more likely to end up dead in this encounter than Arthur was.

“Stay away from my daughter, Morgana,” came a voice from behind him, one that was decidedly not the voice of Anna’s wet nurse.

“I thought you went to bed early,” Arthur called over his shoulder, his voice shaking with the force of the relief he felt. 

“I did,” Merlin said, “Just not my usual bed. Came straight here the minute I felt Morgana cross my wards.”

Across the way, Arthur saw Morgana’s features freeze.

“You didn’t think you could sneak into Camelot without me noticing, did you?” Merlin was saying, his tone casual, conversational. “Not with all the protections the Catha and I have laid about the place. They’re waiting just outside this room, by the way, in case you were thinking of fighting your way out of the castle.”

Morgana cast a sidewise glance toward the door and then returned her gaze to the cradle. She took another halting step forward, but he saw the defeat in her features already.

“You’re my family, Morgana,” Arthur said then, pleading with her to understand. “You’ll always be my family, and that makes you Anna’s family too, but she’s not yours to take, and she never will be.”

For a moment, Morgana stood there and stared at him, and her eyes filled with something that he thought might be sadness…sadness and longing.

But the moment passed, and she took a step back, threw her hands up in the air, spat out a spell and, with a gust of eerie wind, disappeared.

Arthur sheathed his sword, then turned and bent to scoop Anna up into his arms. He held her close against his pounding heart and lowered his face to breathe in the soft scent of her. It helped. It helped ease some of the ache inside that hole deep in his chest.

He could feel her stirring now and held her away from him to look down into her face.

“Morgana’s outside the city now,” he heard Merlin murmur. “I don’t think she’ll try to get back in again tonight.”

Arthur nodded an acknowledgement, but he found he still couldn’t look away from Anna’s beloved face.

“You’re mine,” he whispered fiercely and bent to press a kiss against her forehead. “And Merlin’s…and Gwaine’s too,” he added only somewhat grudgingly (He was _working_ on it, all right). “But even if I have a thousand other children, don’t let anyone convince you for even a second that you aren’t absolutely and completely mine.”

“A thousand, Arthur, really?” Merlin scoffed beside him and then reached to take Anna from his arms. “You can count me out of that plan.”

As Arthur handed Anna over to her other father to be fed, he saw her eyelids flutter open, and he swore for a moment her pale eyes flashed in the firelight.

A light breeze rose from nowhere and ruffled the hair that lay across his forehead.

And Arthur, surprised and delighted, couldn’t help but smile.


	2. Epilogue: Anna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marvel at the flowers you'll have made.

By the eighteenth year of King Arthur’s reign, it had become an accepted fact of life in Camelot that the king shared his bed not with the queen but with Camelot’s own court sorcerer. And considering that said sorcerer had produced the king’s firstborn child, no one in the land found it a particularly shocking fact, even in light of the king and queen’s obvious mutual love and respect. Everyone knew that an alpha and omega who had once claimed each other would not easily part, no matter what future relationships may come to either of them.

What did leave many of Camelot’s citizens in some dismay was the fact that, even after twelve years of marriage, the queen had yet to provide the king with any legitimate heirs. The many rumors attempting to explain this disconcerting circumstance were complicated by the further fact that the king’s lover—aforementioned court sorcerer—had also produced no further children for the king.

Opinion was mixed, but the theory most often put forward was that the difficult birth of Princess Anna had simply left Master Merlin incapable of conceiving again. The queen’s empty womb was a clear sign that Camelot’s monarchs’ marriage was a purely political one. This theory had in its favor the inarguable truth that King Arthur’s marriage to Princess Mithian had not only resolved a long-standing border dispute between Camelot and its southern neighbor, but that it had also united the crown of Nemeth with Camelot’s crown. In these troubled times, with the Saxons growing ever more powerful and more warlike in the east of the island and the Irish raiding and pushing from the west, such a consolidation of land and power (and armies) was considered beneficial to both kingdoms.

There were plenty, of course, who said that the queen and the sorcerer must _both_ be barren. One infertile omega in the royal household would be a rare case, not to mention two (three, if one believed the rumors about the king’s mother), but since Master Merlin had clearly not started out infertile, this argument was waved off easily enough.

Sneering rumors that the alpha king of Camelot was perhaps impotent could be heard in the occasional tavern or inn taproom, though the king was so generally loved by his subjects that such an insult was hardly ever allowed to go unchallenged.

Of course many, even those outside the privileged ranks of the royal family’s inner circle, could do simple maths and deduce that the common factor in both omega’s lack of pregnancies was likely the king himself. Impotent he might not be, but infertile…?

Those within the inner circle knew very well how many years the king and queen had tried for an heir to their joint crowns, only to finally, reluctantly concede defeat. An even smaller inner circle knew that the king had offered to both his queen and his sorcerer the freedom to take another into their beds, someone who would be capable of giving them the children he could not. 

But neither Merlin nor Mithian had evinced the least amount of interest in this offer. That is to say, Merlin had expressed the opinion that one alpha was plenty for him, and Mithian had expressed the opinion that no alpha at all would be her preference. (There was, however, a certain beta lady at court who was seen often in the queen’s company and was publicly referred to as her bosom friend and privately as a variety of terms of endearment.)

Anna had been twelve years old the first time she’d accompanied Queen Mithian on a tour of Nemeth. The king had already been in the habit of taking his daughter along on diplomatic tours, whether of Camelot or its neighbors, for the past year or so. Around the time Arthur had decided he would name Anna as his heir, the queen had quietly had the documents drawn up to name Camelot’s princess her heir as well, and then it was only a matter of adding to the young princess’s education deeper knowledge of Nemeth, its people, their customs, and their laws.

Despite all this, Anna had never wanted for playmates growing up. Her Auntie Gwen and Uncle Lancelot had six children of varying ages, the eldest of which was less than a year Anna’s junior. She’d played big sister to them all and made no distinction between these sort-of cousins and her blood siblings (of which she had two, thanks to her Uncle Gwaine’s roving eye).

She had a sister, too, who had come into her life when she was only two years old and was closer to her than any other. Her little sister shared her every thought and dream, and though she’d yet to master the use of human tongues, they shared a language all their own. Her dad told her that their family and Aithusa’s were distant kin, that someday, far, far in the future, Anna would inherit his power to command dragons in their own tongue. Anna couldn’t really imagine herself commanding Aithusa, though. It was rare that the two of them ever disagreed, and when they did, Anna ended up being the one in the wrong as often as not. Old Kilgarrah on the other hand… Anna and Aithusa were both in agreement that they’d all be much better off ignoring at least half of what the wily old drake told them. Anyway, as far as Anna knew, there weren’t any other dragons for her to command (or not command), though she and her sister had talked often of venturing out into the world to seek more eggs that had been hidden away like Aithusa’s.

When Anna looked in the mirror, she knew exactly what she was seeing: her eyebrows, the shape of her nose and lips, and the color of her eyes—all of these she recognized from her dad’s familiar face. Her hair, of that particular, rich brown that matched neither the king’s nor his court sorcerer’s, the length of her face, the tilt of her smile—none of these things had come from either of the men who were officially her fathers. They’d come from her Uncle Gwaine, along with her easy laughter and her skill with the sword (and not only because he’d been her main teacher in the training yard).

They’d sat and talked about it once, princess and knight, when she’d been old enough to want answers about such things. Not that anyone in her life had kept the facts of her birth a secret from her, but still, it wasn’t a topic of open discussion, even in private.

“I love your dad very much, you know,” Uncle Gwaine had said as the two of them had sat in the grass at the edge of the practice field, summer breezes cooling the sweat of their recent bout. “He’s the first real friend I ever had. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t be alive right now if not for him.”

She’d gazed at him with wide eyes. Never in her life before or since had she ever seen his face so serious.

“But my dad didn’t love you back?” she’d ventured to ask when it had become clear that he’d gone wandering in his thoughts.

He’d come back to her with a quick laugh.

“Oh, he loved me all right. Loves me still. It’s just, Arthur’s it for him. Always has been. What the two of us had, we both knew it was just for fun, just for a time.” He’d laughed again, somehow looking no less serious for it. “Let that be a lesson to you, love, that even fun can lead to permanent consequences.”

She’d rolled her eyes at that. As a thirteen-year-old royal omega, recently come into her first heat, she’d heard only too many lectures already about the importance of making wise sexual decisions. As if just because she had heats now she was suddenly going to run out and hop into bed with some stinking alpha. Ugh! She’d far rather spend her time working the excess energy off in training, either with swords or with magic.

“You and your brother are the best consequences I’ve ever had to deal with, though,” Uncle Gwaine’s voice had drawn her back to the present moment, his eyes twinkling at her with laughter and the same depth of love that she always saw in them.

“You aren’t unhappy I was born, then?” she’d asked, because as little as she doubted his love, there would always be a part of her that wondered why he had given her up.

“Nope,” he’d said, quick and easy. “From the moment I learned that your dad was expecting you, I knew that I’d stumbled into doing something worthwhile for once. I don’t want you to think,” and he paused, that seriousness that was so strange on his face returning, “I don’t want you to think that I didn’t want you, Anna. I did. I _do_. I’m here in Camelot because that’s where you are. If your father hadn’t been there, offering you and your dad all the things that I knew I’d never be able to give you—and I don’t just mean the gold and the castle and all of that. If you’d needed me to, I would’ve been the best father that I could have. In a way, I think I have been that. Every day, I look at you,” he paused again, drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I see the incredible young woman your dads have raised you into, and I know I made the right choice.”

She’d felt a painful tightening in her throat at that, and she’d nodded, not trusting her voice to speak her acknowledgement.

“And if you ever need me, Anna,” he’d said, turning the full force of that sincere gaze on her, “just know I’ll always be here for you.”

And he’d stayed true to his word. That one week a few months after her fifteenth birthday when she’d fought with both her dads and been so frustrated and angry with everything about being a princess and heir to two crowns, all the suffocating rules and responsibilities that came along with her position, it had been her Uncle Gwaine’s door she’d knocked on in the dead of night.

“I can’t be a princess anymore. I need you to help me run away,” she’d declared the moment he’d opened it, and he hadn’t even argued. He’d taken in the hastily-packed saddlebag she had thrown over one shoulder and her full riding kit and simply asked for a quarter of an hour to get his own gear together.

It had been a wonderful adventure, running away together just the two of them and Aithusa. Never had the woods smelled so fresh or the open fields felt so wild and free. They’d trekked to Caerleon, then Essetir, and even across the far border into Mercia, sleeping under the stars, drinking and laughing together in the occasional tavern, even fighting off the occasional roving group of bandits.

During that lovely month away from it all, never once had her Uncle Gwaine demanded she change her mind and go back, though he’d sometimes asked her questions and had lent a sympathetic ear to her every complaint. Yet, somehow, slowly, seemingly all on her own, she’d been led to the conclusion that this wandering life wasn’t the right one for her, that in fact, of all the different ways of living she’d seen throughout their travels, the one that _was_ right for her was back home in Camelot.

It wasn’t until several months after their return that she’d learned that Uncle Gwaine had left behind a letter explaining where he and Anna had gone and that her dad had been trailing them for much of the journey, keeping tabs on their whereabouts and ready to lend a hand if necessary. (“Just like I used to do for your father,” he’d told her with a wry smile.)

She didn’t resent him for it, though, any more than her father, the king, had resented her for her taste of freedom.

He’d been the first person she had visited upon her return. She’d entered his private audience chamber, chin out and shoulders back, throat dry and palms sweating.

“Welcome back,” he’d told her, breaking into a smile even she could see was trembling with relief. “How was your journey?"

She’d burst into tears then. She’d been so ready for a lecture, for anger and recrimination. Instead, she got her father’s strong arms around her, holding her until her sobs subsided. And then she’d got a quiet confession that when he’d been around her age, he’d wanted to run away several times. It was the first time it had occurred to her that her father had once been a teenager like her, that he could understand much of what she feeling, that perhaps he still felt that way himself sometimes, even now as a grown man.

“Never think that you have no choice in this matter,” he’d told her as they sat together, chairs drawn near and hands clasped tight. “When the time comes to make your vows as Crown Princess, you can decide not to take them, and none of us will think any less of you or love you any less for your choice. The life of a ruler is a hard one. I often wish that it hadn’t been forced on you, my love, not because you won’t rise to the challenge but because your life would be so much freer and easier if you didn’t have to.”

“I want to, though,” she’d answered, with all the conviction of her weeks spent trying to convince herself that she didn’t. “While we were traveling around, I kept seeing all these problems and wishing I had the power to fix them. I love Camelot and Nemeth so much. I want to see their inhabitants happy and prosperous. I don’t know if I can ever be as good a ruler as you, but I want to be. I want to care for and protect our lands and our people, to the best of my ability.”

The pride she’d seen in his eyes then had made her heart swell, but she couldn’t miss the sadness tempering it.

“I couldn’t ask for a better daughter, Anna,” he’d said, drawing her into his arms again. “You’ll make a splendid queen one day.” When they’d drawn apart again, each wiping surreptitiously at their eyes, he’d added, “Now, tell me more about all these problems you saw."

When Anna looked in the mirror, she knew she wasn’t seeing any of her father’s features: her eyebrows, her nose, her chin, her hair, none of that came from him. Except, when she tilted her chin just so, she couldn’t help being reminded of the decisive way the king nodded when he’d chosen a course of action, and when she looked into her reflection’s eyes, she was reminded of the steady piercing of her father’s gaze when he listened to others speak during council. And how many times had she heard it remarked that she had the unmistakably noble bearing of a Pendragon? And how many times had old Gaius, back when he’d still been with them, remarked on how like her father she was at her studies, so full of questions and ideas about how to make Camelot a better land?

She was gazing in the mirror again now, not out of vanity but because today was an important day, and she wanted to be sure she would look her best.

In a few minutes, she would leave this small chamber and enter the great hall, where all the foremost nobles of Camelot, Nemeth, Essetir, Gawant, and Caerleon were squeezed in, likely chattering and gossiping and making a great deal of noise because, in Anna’s experience at least, nobles loved nothing more than hearing themselves talk. The presence of those from Essetir was especially notable: normal diplomatic relations between Essetir and Camelot had only recently been resumed, and this was the first time in decades such a sizable Essetiri delegation had dared entered Camelot.

Her own first state visit to Essetir had been accomplished nearly two years ago now, a little more than a year after the Great Running Away (as she tended to think of it). She’d accompanied her dad, who himself had only made his first official visit there some few months previous. Relations between Camelot and Essetir had been strained for nearly all of Anna’s life, a fact that she knew had caused both her fathers some pain, so as she’d prepared for the trip, she’d determined to do everything in her power to speed their reconciliation.

She recalled now the conversation she’d had with her dad the night before they’d departed for Essetir.

“Your Aunt Morgana has been a good queen, from all that we can gather,” he’d told her as the two of them had shared a quiet dinner in her chambers. Normally, Father would have joined them too, but business to the south had called him away. “Her predecessor, King Cenred, was awful, as I can personally attest. You know your Grandma Hunith and I had to live as his subjects for many years.”

Anna knew very well, as she made visits several times a year to Ealdor, where Grandma Hunith still preferred to live. Camelot, she claimed, held too many painful memories for her, and being the grandmother of its princess gave her a level of notoriety there that she didn’t particularly relish. It had to be kept rather hushed up that the Princess Royal made regular jaunts across the border into Essetir, but she loved the time she spent there. Life in Ealdor was so different from everything she had back in Camelot: simpler, harsher, and with its own rough pleasures.

“But you and father defeated King Cenred,” Anna had prompted, adding with a smile, “on the day before I was born.”

“That’s true,” her dad had answered, his bright blue eyes, so much like her own, catching the firelight. “But he was still king for some time after that, even if he was our prisoner here in Camelot. It was only after he tried to go back to Essetir that he discovered that Morgana had snatched his throne out from under him while he wasn’t looking. Oh, I know that technically she got his throne by marrying him, but considering how quickly he, er, expired afterward, I think it’s safe to say the marriage was merely a convenient expedient.”

Anna had nodded. She knew the story well. Queen Morgana had been married to King Cenred for a matter of months before his sudden death, and though he did, in fact, have a legal heir—a cousin of some sort—the nobles of Essetir had preferred to keep his widow on as their ruler instead. Some years later, she’d married the widowed alpha Queen Annis of Caerleon, and they’d united their crowns much as Camelot and Nemeth had done. When Queen Annis had passed a couple of years ago, Queen Morgana had surprised everyone by taking the beta heiress of Gawant, Princess Elena, as her new bride, bringing those lands under her purview as well.

Anna knew very well that King Arthur had made many overtures to her aunt over the years, all but begging her to resume diplomatic relations between their lands. Her father had told her once that he took it as a hopeful sign that, though Queen Morgana had never responded, she had also maintained peace with Camelot throughout all this time.

But Gawant lay to the southwest of Camelot, while Caerleon lay to its northwest and Essetir to its east, and with the combination of all three lands under one crown, Camelot couldn’t help feeling rather hemmed in.

“I had no choice but to make a personal visit to Queen Morgana,” her dad had told her, a frown troubling his otherwise smooth brow. Father’s face had already begun to show the lines of age and care, and his golden hair contained more strands of silver every year, but everyone remarked that her dad hardly looked a day older than when he’d first arrived in Camelot. “She wasn’t happy to have another sorcerer invade her stronghold so easily by magic, but it could have been avoided if she’d just responded to Arthur’s messages.”

As a child, Anna had taken her dad’s powerful magic for granted. The way he’d make flowers bloom for her or conjure pretty butterflies from thin air to make her smile had seemed as natural a part of the world as her father’s tendency to ruffle her hair and swing her up onto his shoulders to look out over the battlements or her Uncle Gwaine’s to spend hours playing silly childish games like tag or hide and seek with her.

But as she’d grown older and gained more magical training—from Gaius, Alator, Iseldir and other druids, and her dad himself—she’d come into a gradual understanding of the uniqueness of his power. The awe with which her second favorite of the knights, Mordred, spoke of _Emrys_, the deference the Catha and the druids always showed in his presence, had dawned on her as she grew to an age to appreciate the meaning behind such things.

Her own magic was powerful enough, though she’d known for a long time that she would never surpass her dad’s abilities. In truth, she didn’t want to. Sometimes, when he spoke of the past, of the bad old days when magic was outlawed in Camelot, and he had to protect his beloved prince in secret, she saw a mantle of sorrow settle on his shoulders. A darkness would descend upon him as he spoke of other magic users, those who had lost their lives at the old king’s hands or even his own, of Nimueh, of Morgause, and on the rare occasion, of Morgana.

“It’s a dangerous balance to strike, being both ruler and sorcerer,” Dad had told her once. “Read your histories carefully, and you’ll see far too many examples of those who became drunk on all the power, who became tyrants, oppressors of the very ones they ought to have protected. Be wary of your power, Anna, and its seductive pull.”

When she’d been small, she’d chafed at the way her dad insisted that she do things the hard way when magic would have made them so simple. He’d make her get up and walk across the room to retrieve an item she wanted, though that was a spell she’d mastered before she’d even left her crib. Or he’d make her polish her armor by hand when she could so easily have set the cleaning rag to do all the hard work while she entertained herself with something else.

Now, though, she appreciated that she knew the proper way to maintain her own armor or mend her own clothes or to start a fire, that she could teach others who didn’t possess magic to do these things. Now, on the cusp of coming fully into her adulthood, she knew only too well the meaning of her dad’s words, of her power’s “seductive pull.” Sometimes it frightened her just how easily she might harm or even kill another, how little effort it might take her to bend the entire world to her will. She hoped that fear never went away, for as long as she lived.

“What is Aunt Morgana like?” she’d asked her dad over that dinner as she’d tried to imagine what it would be like to finally meet her wicked aunt. “No one ever talks about her, except for Auntie Gwen.”

Her dad’s eyes had taken on a distant, remembering look then.

“She’s a woman who knows her own mind,” he’d murmured. “Hard to argue with, for she’ll have thought of every argument you want to make already and have at least two different ways to refute it. She’s sharp. I swear she’s got a dagger in her mouth in place of a tongue,” he’d told her with a grin. “But I think she’ll like you. She never let your father get away with anything. She was good for him, when they were growing up.”

It was the most she’d ever her either of her fathers say about her estranged aunt. The Queen of Essetir was a far more taboo topic in the royal household than even the secret of Anna’s parentage. If not for Auntie Gwen, Anna wouldn’t have known a single thing about her.

“She wasn’t always an enemy,” her auntie had told her once with a sad smile. Anna had come over to play with her cousins, but they’d all wandered off after their dad, leaving Anna to help her aunt with that evening’s dinner, which she’d been invited to stay and share. “She was once my dearest friend. We all made a lot of mistakes back then. I wonder often what we might have done differently, all of us here and her as well, so that we could have stayed friends.”

That idea had captivated Anna’s imagination for a long time. What would her life have been like with her Aunt Morgana in it?

It was Queen Mithian, of all people, who had told Anna the most shocking fact about her Aunt Morgana.

“From everything I’ve heard of her, she takes what she wants when she wants with very little regard for the wishes of others,” the queen had told her one evening on one of their visits to Nemeth. The two of them had been discussing Nemeth’s border with Essetir and the treaties between the two lands which had been negotiated in the time of King Rodor. Queen Morgana had honored these agreements, so far, though Queen Mithian had confided she believed the Essetiri queen was only biding her time. “She tried to kidnap you once. Your father told me that it was one of the most terrifying moments of his life. It was just after you were born, but Merlin was there, and your aunt’s magic wasn’t enough to overcome him.”

“Why did she want to kidnap _me_?” Anna, who had been a naive fourteen at the time, had asked. “I wasn’t even the heir yet then.”

The queen, who had been the one to teach Anna everything she needed to know about life at court as a high-born omega, had smiled a small, courtly smile, the type that gave absolutely nothing away.

“Perhaps you ought to ask your fathers the answer to that question. They knew her far better than I.”

She hadn’t found the courage to ask until that night speaking to her dad, though. She’d felt it was her right to know, now that she was finally meeting her aunt in person.

He hadn’t answered for so long that she'd thought he wasn’t going to at all.

“Many reasons, I think,” he’d finally said, his voice low and uncertain. “Revenge, for the death of her sister, Morgause. And perhaps simply because she was lonely. When she left Camelot, she left behind everyone she’d ever loved.”

Anna had treasured this revelation up inside her heart, turning it over many times throughout their horseback journey to Queen Morgana’s stronghold. If her aunt had been lonely, why had she thought that _Anna_ would be able to take that loneliness away?

When the two of them had finally met, her aunt had been exactly as everyone had described her, and so much more beside. Standing before her mirror now, she still recalled very clearly how Queen Morgana had looked, seated upon her throne in the great hall of her stronghold, a silver circlet laid upon her silken silver hair. She wasn’t old, despite the color of her hair. Her dad had told her that the queen had gone grey before her time. Her cool, green eyes had gazed down upon them from a great height, measuring, weighing, and categorizing them. It had taken all Anna’s years of training to maintain her composure under that icy stare.

“Well met, Princess Anna, Master Merlin,” she’d intoned, beckoning a servant forward with a single, lazy flip of her wrist. It was only then, as the servant’s approach distracted her from the haughty queen, that Anna had taken note of her consort beside her, the smiling, golden-haired Princess Elena. “Let my servants show you to your quarters. Rest, refresh yourselves, and tonight we will feast your arrival.”

Anna had felt magic _everywhere_ in that castle in Essetir, even more than her dad and his people had laid in protection around Camelot. Her ears had buzzed and her skin had tingled with it, but it hadn’t felt malicious—more curious, watchful, with a hint of warning. “Don’t try anything here, or you’ll regret it,” it had seemed to say, and Anna had been wise enough to heed it.

But magic aside, their visit to Essetir had been little different to other state visits Anna had joined her parents on. They had feasted, toured the castle and its lands, sat in council, debated topics of mutual interest, and eventually come to an agreement to tentatively reopen regular diplomatic contact between their kingdoms.

It had been on the last night of their visit, after the successful conclusion of the negotiations, that a sharp rap had come upon the door to Anna’s guest chambers.

“Come in,” she’d called, in the midst of deciding which set of riding clothes to ask her maidservant to lay out for tomorrow.

She’d glanced up with faint interest when the door had opened, but that interest had sharpened considerably when she’d seen who stood there.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Queen Morgana had said with a quick, sharp smile. “You don’t appear to be engaged in anything that can’t be interrupted, though,” she’d added, continuing into the room and shutting the door behind her with a decided click.

“Good evening,” Anna had said, setting aside the tunic she’d been holding and curtseying. She’d eyed the queen, wondering whether she should call for someone. Her dad, maybe? Was she in danger?

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” the queen had said, reading her expression all too easily. “I suppose they raised you to think of me as the big, bad witch.”

“Not exactly,” Anna had said. “Auntie Gwen told me lots of nice stories about you from when you were younger.”

She’d watched a strange spasm cross over the queen’s face, as though it wanted to look sad but she was refusing to let it.

“Gwen was always too soft-hearted,” her aunt had told her eventually. “I’m not surprised she forgave Arthur so easily,” she’d added with a snort.

Anna had seen this for the bait and switch it was, but oh did that comment leave her dying to know what her father had ever done to require Auntie Gwen’s forgiveness. She’d been wary of Queen Morgana’s intentions, though, so she’d stored up that question for someone whose answer she could place more trust in.

“Is there something I can help you with?” she’d asked instead.

Then her aunt had turned that same cool, appraising look on her that she'd remembered from the day of their arrival. She’d straightened her posture and stood still for the inspection. That had made the queen smile.

“I wonder if you’d still be the same if I’d had my way and been allowed to raise you as my own,” her aunt had said then. “Enough time has passed now that I can admit maybe Arthur was right to keep you for himself. I’ve been watching you, you know, your entire time here.” She didn’t say what she’d seen or what conclusions she’d drawn, but her next words spelled it out plainly enough. “I need an heir, Anna. Neither I nor my wife have any interest in bearing children of our own bodies, but you and Arthur are my family too. When I am gone, Essetir, Caerleon, and Gawant will need a ruler, and I believe you might be her.”

Despite all her training, Anna’s mouth had dropped open then. She’d been so in shock, that every possible response had failed her.

Luckily, Queen Morgana hadn’t waited for an answer from Anna. Instead, she’d graced her with another of her razor sharp smiles and continued.

“When I look at you, I see what I might have been,” she’d said, her voice dropping to a low murmur. “My own father didn’t think much of having an omega daughter, much less one with magic, but it seems Arthur is different. I… Maybe I should have expected that of him. I don’t know. Many doubted I could rule, both in Camelot and here, and I’d wager you find yourself similarly doubted. But Elena and I both like what we’ve seen of you. Think on it.”

Then she’d turned and left as precipitously as she’d come, leaving Anna staring after her with a whole ocean of thoughts roaring through her head.

Anna had turned over that conversation for weeks afterward, trying to understand its meaning, whether the queen had been straightforward or whether her words had veiled some deeper plot. At last, she’d been forced to take the matter to her fathers.

Their initial reaction had caught her off guard. She’d always thought of her fathers as wise and careful and understanding. Despite their obvious wariness of Essetir’s queen, despite Anna’s own knowledge of the fraught past they had with her, she hadn’t been prepared for the explosiveness of their response.

For the first time in her life, Anna had found herself in the position of acting as the voice of reason for her fathers.

“I was perfectly fine,” she’d all but shouted over them. “She wasn’t trying to kidnap me again or anything.”

“I’d like to see her try,” the king had growled, his sword hand squeezing hard upon the pommel of his trusty blade.

“But she _didn’t_ try,” Anna had objected, bewildered by how ridiculous he was being. “She just wanted to talk.”

“With Morgana, it’s never just talk,” her dad had cut in then, a bitterness in his tone she’d never heard there before. “But what could she possibly _get_ out of making an offer like that? Is she trying to make us paranoid? Provoke us into some sort of action?”

“Maybe she’s just hoping to get an heir?” Anna had tried to say.

It had taken months, the cooler heads of Queen Mithian and Auntie Gwen, and a formal overture from the Joint Crowns of Essetir, Caerleon, and Gawant, but eventually her fathers had been forced to accept that Anna had the right of it. After several more meetings and rounds of negotiations, a treaty had been drawn up, outlining the new, special relationship among the five kingdoms.

All of which had led to today, to Anna stood before her mirror dressed as she so rarely was in a formal court gown, with her hair worn loose and long down her back and jewels at her ears and throat. She looked very well, she thought, even if the heavy fabric made her feel like she could barely move. At least she had her favorite blade strapped around her waist over top of the soft, blue velvet.

_You seem excited_, came her sister’s voice, and she turned to find Aithusa’s head poking through the open window. An early spring had come to Camelot, and Anna, tired of waiting and of winter’s stuffiness, had thrown the window of this small preparation room wide to let in the brisk breeze and the fresh scents of grass of new blooms. Seeing Aithusa’s curious face there now, she remembered that there was a rooftop a short way below, where her sister must have landed to check on her as she prepared for the upcoming ceremony. There had been a time when Aithusa had slipped in and out of castle rooms as easily as Anna herself, but in recent years, she’d grown too large to enter anywhere but the great hall. (The upside of this was that she’d also grown strong enough to start carrying Anna upon her back, taking her high into the air on dizzying flights that let her see all of Camelot spread out below her, tiny and dear.)

“I’m very excited,” Anna agreed with a grin. “Nervous too. All those people out there are waiting to see me and judge what kind of queen I’ll be someday.” What she didn’t add was that a good half of them, at least, had likely already judged that an omega woman wasn’t fit to be any kind of ruler at all. Her Aunt Morgana had guessed all too truly about that.

_If they can’t see you’ll be the very best kind, then they’re a bunch of dunces_, Aithusa opined, baring her gleaming fangs. Anna didn’t doubt that she’d heard the undercurrent of her sister’s words anyway. The two of them found it difficult to hide anything from one another.

Anna chuckled, the sound bubbling out as a high-pitched, nasal squeak. All right, so it didn’t exactly require magic to divine just how nervous she was.

“If they can’t see it,” she murmured, “then it means I’m not showing it well enough.”

“Perhaps,” said someone else from behind her, and she turned to find her dad there, tall and regal in his own formal court wear: the somber robes of a sorcerer. His eyes were fixed on her with a warm, steady glow that instantly raised her spirits. “But your sister’s words are truer than you know. Some fools will never be convinced, and that’s no fault of yours.”

She offered him a grateful smile, and he came over and pressed a kiss against her forehead.

“Are you ready?”

Anna wanted to say no, but that would do her no good. She was ready enough, and for now that would have to suffice.

_Don’t worry, _came her sister’s voice into her thoughts as she took her dad’s arm and let him lead her from the room, _just point out which ones are particularly dunce-like, and I’ll make sure to singe them._

Anna held in a smile, instead focusing on holding the regal posture Queen Mithian and the other court ladies had trained her in since birth. Today was a day to make a good impression.

And then they were at the entrance to the great hall, and two of the servants were pulling the great wood-and-iron doors open, and her dad was leading her inside, down a long row of courtiers whose robes rustled and creaked as they bowed low to their princess.

Up ahead, upon the dais, a small crowd of people awaited her, but as her gaze moved from face to face, she felt the last of her nerves melting away. Not a single one of them was a stranger to her: Uncle Gwaine, Auntie Gwen and Uncle Lance, Sirs Elyan, Percival, and Leon, Queen Mithian and Queen Morgana, and of course, her father, the King of Camelot himself.They were all there, ready to bear witness to her vows as she was invested as Crown Princess of the realms of Camelot, Nemeth, Essetir, Caerleon, and Gawant, or—as had lately come up in discussions where they’d all agreed that naming all five kingdoms every time was rather impracticable—the kingdom that would someday be known as Albion.

“Princess Anna,” came her father’s strong, clear voice, the note of pride it held unmistakeable, “step forward and kneel.”

As she sank to her knees upon the cushion laid at her father’s feet and looked up into his solemn face, she couldn’t fight the silly urge that came over her. Fortunately no one but those up on the dais noticed when the king’s silver and gold hair gave a tiny ruffle in a sudden mysterious breeze, and his lips twitched into the tiniest of smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the tumblr post if you'd like to reblog! https://transdimensional-void.tumblr.com/post/188303492075/and-if-secrets-were-like-seeds

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! Feel free to contact me on Twitter @Smartinis or on Tumblr @transdimensional-void


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